Air Video is an iPhone/iPod touch application used for streaming video from a PC in your home.

There are 2 components to be installed. The server piece installs on your Windows or Mac PC. Installation is a simple affair as is configuration. You set the "Shared Folders" and a few other options, including internet accessibility.

The iPhone/iPod touch application is offered in 2 flavors: a free application and a paid ($2.99) application. I started out with the free version just to see how things worked. I was allowed to view the folder I had shared from my windows home server and I was allowed to choose from a random selection of videos within the folder structure.

Air Video works by converting your videos on the fly to stream them to your iPhone or iPod touch. This real-time conversion was flawless, even on my old AMD 3000+ 64it processor. Videos played perfectly over my home wifi network so I quickly purchased the full version. This allowed access to my whole video collection. I now have access to my entire video library from any location where there is an accessible wifi connection or a 3G signal.

This application is simple to set up and it just WORKS. It is extremely impressive, especially for such a low price. In my opinion the application is well worth the very minimal cost. You can find the iPhone/iPod touch application in the iTunes app store, and you can find the server installation as well as more information on the company's web site [Air Video].

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I've decided to clear up as much clutter in my house as possible. Part of this has been eliminating hundreds of CD's that I no longer want taking up space. To this end, I've started ripping these into iTunes.

So far everything has gone perfectly. I've set iTunes to automatically import the CD on insert, ripping all the songs as mp3's. I plan on storing the CD's out of the way, either in the garage or in the attic. If I decide that I would like to listen to an album I've saved off to the library, I can either copy the files to my iPhone or burn a CD to listen to since blank CD's are so cheap.

A couple of questions I have:
- Is there a better tool for keeping and managing my library than iTunes?
- Are there any issues with having an all digital music system that I should be aware of?

iTunes has done fine so far but has a few drawbacks. Sharing could use more features. I have to sync my iPhone, an iPod nano, and an old 3rd gen iPod to the library on two different machines. It would be really nice if I could sync using the sharing features, but I need to have the library open directly on the syncing machine. This gets REALLY slow if I try to store the library on a central server and open it from there. I've ended up storing multiple copies of the library on each machine and this is a pain to keep in sync. Any suggestions?

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Found this iPhone holder at Boing Boing. Made one, it works relatively well, especially for the price.

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