Infuse

Wished I’d discovered Infuse earlier. It has proven the ultimate media player on an Apple TV 4K. I use Infuse teamed up with my Plex Media Server, so my watch history is all perfectly synced across all my devices, including non-Apple devices using Plex. My only issue with Infuse is that the Lifetime license is relatively expensive (compared to other Apps), being almost 10 years equivalent Annual subscriptions. A lot happens in the digital space in 10 years. A Lifetime license of around 5 years subscription equivalent would make more sense, and I’d probably jump in like I did with Plex lifetime (unless Infuse don’t want people to pay for the one-off Lifetime?).

Slow, movies don’t stream, even though we have a good wifi speed

It is a player and works ok but not spectacular. There are so many shortcomings. Sorting is atrocious! It still sorts only on the name even if the first word is “The” or “A”, which should be excluded or given the opinion. Some people who don’t know better sort like that. There are no options for having multiple versions of the same movie. There are many more and despite requesting, explaining and even sending layouts - nothing. Nothing really ever gets better. It would be great to edit the genres.

Watched a few movies from my own drives using it, then it blocks playback without subscription. Uninstalled. F subscriptions and ridiculous price tags.

My Apple TV 4K with Plex player keeps stuttering during playback unless I transcode over my own gigabit local network. Infuse just works including TRUEHD audio playback. I love it! Plex the server Infuse the player Winning combo.

I use infuse on MacOS, Apple TV and iOS, primarily for streaming from Plex. The difference is night and day compared to the native app. On Apple TV, for example, Infuse is the only way to play some of the bluray media natively, as the native Plex app forces a transcode on some audio files. My only gripe is the UI/UX.. The native Plex app is lightyears ahead of Infuse in terms of brownsing the library. This REALLY needs work, as I'd use Infuse as the primary app if it mirrored how nice Plex is in this respect. At the moment I flick between Plex and Infuse when needed, which is also a pain.

The title says it all,

I used airvideo and airvideo HD for a very long time to transcode videos to watch on ipad and iphone. This comes from a time where the ipad could only get video on mp4, so you had to always encode then transfer with itunes back on the ipad 2 and iphone 4. Airvideo is now deprecated for a few years and not even available for download on app store so it was time to look for a replacement, as x265 videos would simply crash it. I first tried emby then jelly fin, built a pc with 64GB ram with proxmox and an i7 10700 to have plenty of power for transcoding. Configured the hardware transcoding on emby and jellyfin which were ok but sometimes did not play.. I gave up on hardware transcode and eventually assigned 14 threads to the VM, it was working ok but sometimes a bit slow to start playback and that was using a lot of cpu from the box. One day, I see VLC can play from samba share on the ipad. Performance is good but the interface a bit inconvenient to use so I explore for another alternative. Comes infuse. This thing can decode any video you throw at it. It does not play music unfortunately (mp3, etc) But it will basically be like jellyfin, index and organize folders with nice thumbnail, but without any hassle from having a “server”. The drawback is you need good bandwidth as it will not transcode and just decode the raw file on device, but the playback speed is close to instant on a local network with good wifi. I am never looking back. Did not use airvideo for some time, removed jellyfin and emby. This is an app worthy to pay for, so I took the lifetime pass. It would be nice to add mp3 playback because VLC can play flac and mp3, and that would basically make it almost the ultimate local media consumer app. Note this app has so many integration possibility, you can stream from dropbox, icloud files, smb..

Freaking love this app. Not only does it make watching movies easier but it’s just a better and organised way. It’s just so satisfying seeing all of my movies in one place and I just love when it’s almost as good as all the streaming apps. 💖

This players features are decent but it’s cost is expensive. AVPlayerHD offers many same features especially when combined with Air Video HD, it covers 90% of this apps features; add FileBrowser’s inbuilt streaming support for video players & you’ve got 95% covered - except each of these 3 apps is a one-off cost (app-purchase). If Infuze was more reasonably priced at around 50% of its current price and it continues to add more features annually, perhaps this 50% reduced price would make it a great choice in my books. I’d suggest you try VLC, AVPlayerHD, Air Video HD in combination with FileBrowser & get a monthly subscription to Infuze & compare - before committing to a never ending subscription payment.