MoboPlayer is a new video player for Google Android, and it may just be the most impressive multimedia app I’ve seen for the platform. The app supports most video formats including MP4, MOV, and MKV, and also supports subtitles and multiple audio streams. You can create playlists for continues playback, and the app can also stream internet media using http and rtsp protocols.

I tested playback with a standard definition DiVX file, and the video looked great. The player is also very responsive when pausing or skipping forward or back in a video.

Read the rest of this entry »

VPlayer is fast becoming my favorite video player for Google Android. The app supports a wide range of video formats including DiVX, Xvid, WMV, M4v, FLV, AVI, MKV, MOV, and MP4. But while the app can handle almost any video I throw at it, when I first installed VPlayer alpha a few months ago the user interface was a bit spartan.

Scan to download

Now the developer has released a Beta version of VPlayer, with a couple of major changes.

First up, there’s support for gestures. You can adjust the size of a video by using two fingers to pinch and zoom. If you scroll your finger up and down on the right side of the display you can adjust the volume, while swiping up and down the left side will adjust the screen brightness. You can also seek by swiping from left to right along the bottom of the display.

Second, there’s now a preferences menu where you can adjust things like the video aspect ratio, video quality, toggle gesture support, or change the root folder to make finding your video files easier.

There are three video quality settings: High speed, Medium, and High Quality. If you select High speed, the app should attempt to play any videos at all, even if they have high bit rates or HD resolutions. This may mean that you’ll see some distortion, but the frame rate shouldn’t drop. You can improve overall video quality by selecting the High quality setting, but some videos may not play smoothly.

That said, I still wasn’t able to play 720p HD DiVX files on my Google Nexus One without some severe audio/video sync issues. You may have better luck with different video formats.

VPlayer Beta is available as a free download from the Android Market. The app supports Android 2.1 and up.

You can find more screenshots after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

After taking CineXPlayer for a disappointing test drive this morning I decided to see if I could find another app that would let me watch Xvid and DivX movies on my iPod touch. I was pleasantly surprised to discover OPlayer, an app which not only handles those formats, but also MKV, WMV, and other video formats.

Even better, unlike CineXPlayer, OPlayer offers a free, ad-supported version of its app so you can try it out without spending any money before deciding whether to plunk down $2.99 for the full version. (The iPad version of OPlayer costs $4.99).

The video quality was pretty good with a few Xvid and WMV files I tried… but you’ll have best results with standard definition video. I tried a few HD DivX files and playback was a little choppy. That makes sense, since the iPhone and iPod touch feature hardware acceleration for H.264 video playback, but not for the other formats OPlayer can handle.

If video playback is choppy, you can enable a Skip Frame feature which may improve performance. You can also adjust the screen aspect ratio in the settings, although there’s no simple way to adjust the aspect ratio while a video is playing, which means you might have to spend a little time going back and forth until you get things right.

Still, for now OPlayer is hands down the best third party video player for the iPhone and iPod touch available today, at least when it comes to support for a wide range of video codecs.

The app also supports MKV, RMVB, MOV, and 3GP video files and lets you transfer files to your device either using iTunes or using the OPlayer tools including a feature that lets you download videos from the web or an FTP server. You can also transfer files to your mobile device over a WiFi connection.

You can check out a few more screenshots after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

Update: Make sure to read our list of 13 great video players for Android phones and tablets.

When it rains it pours. For the first two years of Google Android’s life there weren’t really any all purpose video players for the platform. The built in video player is bundled with Android’s picture viewer and only supports a handful of video formats. But recently RockPlayer launched an excellent video player with support for a wide range of formats including MKV, Xvid, WMV, and DiVX.

RockPlayer comes in free and paid versions, with the free version including some advertisements.

Scan to download

Today I ran across another Swiss army knife video player called arcMedia. It’s completely free — at least while in beta. It  uses open source FFmpeg libraries and can handle a similar range of video formats including DiVX, Xvid, MOV, Mp4, WMV, and RMVB. The arcMedia video player supports all versions of Google Android.

The new video player has an attractive file browser and a nice big pause/play button on the video playback screen. There’s also a button you can press to adjust the video size to fit your display, and a timeline allowing you to skip ahead and back in a video. There’s no fast forward, rewind, or skip button. The overall UI is pretty basic. But video playback is smooth and I haven’t noticed any audio video synchronization problems on my Google Nexus One.

The arcMedia video player is available as a free download from the Android Market.

Update: Check out our list of 12 of the best video players for Android

RockPlayer is kind of the holy grail of video players for Google Android. It’s an app that can handle virtually any video format you can throw at it — provided the video isn’t wrapped up in DRM copy protection. I took RockPlayer for a test drive while it was still in beta testing, but now the developer has released a full version of the app.

Best of all, it’s available as a free download for Android 1.6 and up. The free version is ad-supported, but you can get rid of the ads by clicking the “activate” button and ponying up $9.99 for a registration key.

The app comes in three versions, with support for ARM V6, V7, or an ARM V6 CPU with VFP instruction set. You’ll probably have best results with a newer device fast processor.

Controls are pretty simple. When you launch the app you’re presented with a file browser to select the media you want to play. Once it’s playing, just tap the screen to bring up a menu that lets you pause, fast forward, rewind, or resize the video.You can also click an information buton to get details about the audio and video formats.

Some users have reported that audio and video goes out of sync when playing some videos on some handsets, so I recommend taking the free version for a spin before registering for a full license. But for now, RockPlayer is without a doubt the best video player available for Google Android devices — with the possible exception of the Archos 5 Internet Tablet and Archos 7 Home Tablet, which both come with Archos media playback software.

Most Android devices support a handful of media codecs out of the box, including H.264 and MP4. But there are a ton of formats that aren’t typically supported, including MKV, DiVX, Xvid, and WMV. And RockPlayer can handle them all.

The RockPlayer user interface couldn’t be much simpler. When you fire up the app, you’ll see a file browser. Just scroll around until you find the video you want to watch, tap it, and odds are it will start playing.

There are a handful of on-screen controls, including fast forward and rewind buttons, a play/pause button, and a zoom button. Clicking on zoom once will increase the size of the video, while hitting it twice will stretch the video to fit the size of your display — which works pretty well if you have a video that’s formatted with a 16:9 aspect ration, but not so well with 4:3 videos. You can tap anywhere on the video to make the controls go away.

Because most Android devices don’t have hardware decoding support for DiVX, WMV, and many other codecs, RockBasePlayer can be somewhat taxing on the CPU. You’ll probably have best results using a device with a fairly speedy CPU. I had no problems watching videos on a Google Nexus One.

Up until now the best app I’d found for playing DiVX and Xvid movies was Wuzhenhua Player. RockBasePlayer blows that app out of the water when it comes to ease of use, codec support, stability, and perhaps most importantly, the ability to watch videos in landscape mode.

Update: RockPlayer remains one of the best media players for Android with support for a wide range of video files. But since this article was originally published a number of excellent alternatives have arrived on the scene. Check out our list of 13great video players for Google Android.