BUZZ Player review

We review BUZZ Player, an iPhone multimedia app that streams music and videos to your iPhone over Wi-Fi

There’s no denying MP4 videos look great and improve on the old blocky, artifacty (invented a new word, there) MPG that skyrocketed the world of full-motion video all those years ago. But it’s still baffling that  the iPhone refuses to view anything other than MP4’s. Indeed, it feels like a signification step backwards in the world of portable multimedia.

Fortunately a new wave of video and audio playback apps is on the rise, and these have no problem with offering compatibility. BUZZ Player is one such app, from Vietnamese developer BUGUN Software, and it’s got an utterly insatiable appetite for your digital music and video.

Firstly, this app is geared up to accept all the standard file formats you’re likely to find floating around your computer. AVI, WMV, h.264, RealVideo and all the Mpegs are fully supported and play on the iPhone’s crisp screen with the greatest of ease. This alone makes the app invaluable for anyone who likes to watch a video or two during their commute, as the time saved in converting them to Apple-compliant MP4 files will add days to your viewing year.

And it’s much the same story with audio files, although the iPhone itself is a little more forgiving in this area. AAC, AC3, ALAC, AMR, DTS, FLAC and, of course, MP3 are present and working, along with a bunch of more obscure file types, ensuring you can listen to whatever you want to through the iPhone.

You can transfer your content to BUZZ Player via the drag-and-drop file sharing feature in iTunes, which is a fast and simple method of transporting potentially large files. There’s also a web server built into the app, allowing you to connect wirelessly through a web browser and send the files over Wi-Fi. Once on the device, you can put together both video and audio playlists, and create folders to keep your entertainment organised.

Perhaps most impressive of all is BUZZ Player’s streaming ability. We tested it out with our Synology network-attached storage, which BUZZ Player picked up on automatically as soon as we browsed the network. It can plug into your computer or server via a SAMBA protocol or over FTP, and grabs any files you want for download directly to the device.

If you’re watching within range of your network, however, there’s no need to download anything. BUZZ Player can stream your music and videos straight off the computer or server, and appears to do so quite effortlessly. A couple of seconds of buffering allowed for seamless, perfectly synced viewing, even as we strayed toward the outer reaches of the Wi-Fi network.

With fully customisable video-out controls, this app has the potential to become just as useful in the living room as it is on the train. Any external subtitles for your streamed videos are picked up on and overlaid on the image, and if you’ve got the technical nonce to set things up, you can even perform all this streaming magic over the Internet.

BUZZ Player manages to package a huge feature set into a very useable app, which takes minimal setup and user knowledge of networking protocols to put all your music and videos in your pocket. Your iPhone needs this kind of usable connectivity, and if Apple won’t provide it, BUZZ Player will.

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