Watch XVid, DivX movies on iPad with CineXPlayer

CineXPlayer is an app that will let you play XVid and DivX movies on your iPad without having to have to convert them!  I’m shocked how this was allowed in the app store, Apple has dumb policy about applications that duplicate functionality, but this one went thru!  And it’s FREE!!!  No wonder it’s currently #1 app on top of the Free Apps chart in the App Store 🙂  No need to Jailbreak your device.  So is it any good?  Read this mini review to find out!

There are several things I’d like to see in a perfect Video Player program.

  1. Ability to play most if not all formats.
    CineXplayer can play two most popular codecs for AVI container: DivX and XVid. While this should cover most of your needs unfortunately it can’t play MPEG4 mkv files, or any other format. I was curious if it can play normal quick time files that iPad’s built-in player can handle, and answer to this is NO which is quite surprising.  I don’t know if it can play VOB or plain MPEG files, this yet remains to be seen.
  2. Be able to resume playback.
    Put a check mark on this one. It works, however resuming sometimes takes few seconds as video starts playing artifacts are shown but they disappear soon.
  3. Have more than just 3 basic buttons to control playback.
    Sadly this app has even less control than Apple’s castrated  limited media player. There are not even FF or REV buttons present. Just play/pause, skip to beginning, volume and progress bar.
  4. Be able to drag and drop files without a “middleman” software (iTunes).
    I didn’t expect this would be allowed by Apple’s nazi rules, and I wasn’t wrong. You still have to use stupid slow as snail iTunes to copy video files.  But at least you don’t have to use horrible Sync features (which wipes out files and apps at will) so you have some level of control. Files can be copied to CineXPlayer via App tab in iTunes.
  5. Being able to delete video files without having to have to connect iPad to computer.
    Feature is offered here, same way as in iPad’s built in player. Swipe to delete.
  6. Stability. I don’t want player to crash while i’m watching the movie.
    I’ve only been using CineXPlayer for less than a day so I can’t comment on this one yet. It hasn’t crashed yet on me 🙂

In conclusion I’d have to say that this seems like there’s a lot of room for improvement, but CineXPlayer definitely has my vote.  The ammount of time it’s going to save me by not having to convert TV shows is huge.

Update: I’ve discovered a pretty annoying bug in CineXPlayer while testing playback of MP4 files. Because unsupported files will not show up in the player’s list, there’s no way to delete them from your iPad!  Fortunately you can delete it from within iTunes. Go to Apps tab, select CineXplayer from Apps List under File sharing. In the right window select file you want to remove and hit Delete button on your physical keyboard.

 

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