iPhone video
playback is one of its most exciting
features. The
iPhone
beautiful retina display, its support of
high definition H.264 encoded video and its portability,
makes it just perfect for watching TV and videos.
The
iPhone 3G
and iPhone 3GS have a 3.5 inch touch screen display at a
resolution of 480 x 320, while the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S have 640 x 960 retina display. The iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S have a 4" retina display at 640 x 1136 resolution which is a little longer than the iPhone 4 and 4S but not wider.
The iPhone 5 longer display makes it even better to display a full HD video filling the whole screen.
The iPhone video format supported are MPEG-4 and H.264 with iPhone 4 supporting 720P, while the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 supporting up 1080p video recording and playback at 30 frames per second.
There are several ways to watch video on the
iPhone.
Each method has its own huge
library of videos
from different
categories.
1- Download Videos From the iTunes Video Store:
The iTunes
video Store
has a huge
library of videos
that you can download for free, rent or buy. The
iTunes video tab in the iTunes app on your iPhone
gives you access to
hundreds of
movies,
TV shows, and
music videos.
When you select any
of those categories, you can preview the
video
before you buy it or rent it.
The prices
range depending on the video, if it is
music, video or a movie. However, there are many free shows that you can stream online or
download. Those videos, movies and shows are guaranteed to be the best
quality you can get on the
iPhone.
Once they are purchased, you can watch them at anytime with no need to connect to the internet. You can always access all your purchases by tapping the Purchases button.
2- Use YouTube to Watch iPhone Video:
YouTube videos are free. You can download the YouTube
app
for free from the App Store that to login to your YouTube account and watch all the videos on your play list.
All the
YouTube videos
are H.264
encoded videos and therefore are playable on the iPhone with no problem.
You can watch the high quality
version of the video if you are over
wifi
or LTE but the slower the network the less quality you get.
There are many third party YouTube applications in the App store. Some of them allows you to download the video to your iPhone to watch it later.
Then, you can play those YouTube videos at anytime off line with no need to to connect to the internet. Those hacks requires you to jailbreak your iPhone and run Cydia.
3- Install video Apps from the App Store:
Another method of watching iPhone video is by installing
video applications
from the App Store. There are many iPhone video applications that allow you to
watch
recorded video
on-line using
wifi
or even 3G or LTE connections.
The
followings are some of the best iPhone video apps I found that play video over both 3G and
LTE, so you don't have to have
wifi. The quality of those
videos
are very good, and they cover a big selection of categories such as drama,
family, entertainment, events, news, comedy, film, and many more.
All
the videos are recorded, so you can watch them at anytime. You can even
pause and rewind. So they are very good if you are in an airport or
just want to burn some time while you are waiting for something.
CNETTV is one of the best video applications available in the App Store that review technology. It is
free, works on 3G/LTE, and the interface is really nice. You can browse
videos
from many different channels.
CNN is a good video application with many recorded stories, news, and TV shows. You can even login to your TV provider network and watch live CNN on your iPhone.
msnbc is another app that has many news videos.
Joost
has a large collection of
Film,
Music, and Shows. Each one of those
categories is broken down into classic, drama, horror, animation and
many more.
Mediafly is another nice interface video application. On the
left side of each stream, it tells you if it is a
video
or audio. There
are many channels from comedy, cars, entertainment and many others.
There are many more video apps in the App Store. Simply search for
"video" and you will find
Discovery Channel, Disney, Press TV, iCam, Qik,
Family Guy ($1.99), Television ($2.99). You can even find many Arabic video applications
such as Aljazeera Arabic, BBC arabic, France24 and many more.
Converting
videos
to iPhone guarantees that the
video
you want is always on your
iPhone and ready to play at any time without connecting to the internet.
Disadvantages of Converting Video:
• It is time consuming
as you have to wait for
the conversion and depending on the length of the
video
and the speed
of your computer this time could be very long.
• It takes
unnecessary space.
Now you have to have two copies of the same
video.
The original
video
and the converted
iPhone video, which use space on
your
computer. Also, you have to have the video on your
iPhone, which
takes another space on the
iPhone
itself.
• It could have some
quality issues. If
you don’t select the correct resolution, and the
correct format, the final result might end up with an unnecessary
bigger file, a very bad quality file, or even a non-working video file.
The iPhone comes with a default
movie player
that supports limited video formats. Therefore, playing different
video formats
like wmv, avi and
DivX
required converting the video to an iPhone supported video format which could be time consuming.
This is my favorite method of playing
videos on the iPhone.
It simply works by using the power of your desktop computer to convert videos on the fly to a supported iPhone video format.
You can
then watch almost any video format on your iPhone whether it is
AVI
or
WMV
and regardless of its
size. Orblive and Air Video are the best iPhone
video applications
that do this type
of on the fly video conversion.
The
conversion happens in real time on your desktop computer. A server application is installed on your computer that converts any video to the H.264 format supported by the
iPhone.
Many of the
videos
on the internet could be accessed simply by using
MobileSafari or other iPhone browsers by
visiting the url of many video
sharing
websites. This interface is usually called a web app.
For example, if
you go to YouTube.com using
mobile safari, you can watch the
YouTube videos
without running the YouTube
app. The website will switch to the
mobile version which would look much like the native YouTube app.
The same thing happens if you go to break.com.
You will be directed to the mobile version of the
website, which looks
just like a full native iPhone application. Then you can play
iPhone videos
normally as if
you were running a native iPhone application.
There
are many video sharing websites that allow you to share and watch videos online using your iPhone, simply by running Safari on the iPhone.
I will list a
few video sharing sites, but there are many more. Just enter the below url's into your Mobile Safari or any internet browser and enjoy a huge selection of home and other types of videos on your iPhone.
Break.com
metacafe.com
blip.com
clipfish.com
iphone.dailymotion.com veoh.com
home.disney.go.com (visit the video category for some Disney TV shows,
music, and movies.
eonline.com (go to the video tab)
beam.tv revision3.com
iphone.foxnews.com/ (in Media there are lots of free videos)
iphone.koreus.com
mywaves.com
And of course, the best thing about playing a video within safari is that you can play youtube iphone background free without subscribing to the Google youtube Red, or Youtube premium for a monthly fee.
8- iPhone Flash Players:
Although, there is no official flash to iPhone support by Apple, there is an Android flash player port for the
iPhone
called Frash which is an iPhone hack that allows you to play flash contents on the
iPhone
with Mobile Safari. Of course, this requires jailbreaking your iPhone and installing Frash through Cydia. It is compatible with iPad,
iPhone 3GS
and iPhone 4.
9- Play Flash Video With SkyFire
SkyFire is a fully functional iPhone browser that brings flash to iPhone. SkyFire doesn't require an iPhone jailbreak, and is available in the App Store for $2.99. Although SkyFire has more features than the iPhone safari browser, I only use it to play flash video on my iPhone 4.
This is an exciting way of displaying
video
on your iPhone. It displays live video of your friends and family. With the iPhone front facing camera, video chatting is great with iPhone video applications such as Skype, Yahoo messenger, Tango, and FaceTime.
iPhone Video on External Display:
Many iPhone video applications supports video out by default, which means that by connecting a TV out cable to the iPhone, you can watch your favorite videos on your regular TV or HDTV. This
makes the iPhone a perfect portable movie player where you can play videos on the go on a big TV screen having the right connection.
The iPhone can be connected to an external TV using different methods and connections. Each method has different output quality. Connecting an iPhone HDMI adapter to an HDTV is the best method for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.
Starting with iOS 4, iOS 5 on the iPhone 4S and iOS 6 on the iPhone 5, AirPlay is the best method of displaying your video on your HDTV. It requires an Apple TV to be connected to your TV, and will allow you to watch your videos without wires on your big screen TV. AirPlay is the button shown below by the red circle.