Infuse Review

A particularly situational app, some users will look at the feature set of Infuse and wonder just why they need it when the built-in Videos app does everything they want. Infuse is for those users who want to play videos from other sources, without the need for conversion first. That covers quite a few different needs, from those wanting to watch family videos taken on a different device to those wanting to watch their converted DVD or blu-ray collection, while on the move. It'll even allow users to view video attachments that have been emailed through. Regardless of one's needs, Infuse is an attractive and useful app.

Covering many of the more important bases, Infuse offers support for over 14 file formats, such as AVi, M4V, FLV, MOV and OGM. Plenty of audio formats are catered for too, such as the increasingly elusive Dolby Digital Plus format. Infuse works smoothly too, with little significant slowdown noticeable during my time using it on either my iPhone or iPad.

In each case, when dealing with a film or TV show, Infuse makes everything all the more attractive. Via an old-fashioned cinema style interface, users can view poster art, plot summary, cast and much more about each title. It's easily done with the app doing a great job of capturing such information. A similar nice touch is how the app shows a ticket stub when the user decides to play a file.

The real jewel in the crown for Infuse, however, is its subtitle support. Play a film or TV show, and the app will quickly find suitable subtitles for it, even if they're not already within the video file. Once added, users have plenty of flexibility in terms of changing the typeface or size, immediately ensuring that Infuse is a fantastic app for the hard of hearing.

Infuse isn't quite perfect, given its lack of AirPlay support and inability to wirelessly transfer files (with users left to using iTunes File Sharing), but it's certainly progressing very well. For many users with their own collection, $4.99 will seem quite the bargain for time saved converting.