Roxio (a division of Sonic Solutions) has launched Roxio Streamer, a free application for the Apple iPhone or iPod Touch which allows you to do true video streaming of video files from your Mac to your iPhone or iPod Touch. It doesn’t matter whether you are in the same home or building, or anywhere else on the planet where you have either WiFi or 3G access (3G, only with the iPhone 3G). Unlike downloading, true streaming will not fill up the iPhone’s (or iPod Touch’s) memory with the entire videos you watch. The videos you stream can be your own, those you have recorded with your TiVo, or with your EyeTV.

Roxio Streamer is free, but requires the use of Toast 10 on your Mac. For more information about Toast 10, click here for my full review of it, plus the bundled applications. Roxio Streamer is currently localized in several languages: Castilian (the most widely used Spanish language, but certainly not the only one), English, French, German, Italian, and Japanese. You can download Roxio Streamer either directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch via the Apple App Store, or on your computer via iTunes, for later synchronization with your iPhone.

The códec used for streaming with Toast 10 and Roxio Streamer is H.264. For a full background of H.264, see my article Encoding web video in the age of the iPhone. If the video you supply to Toast 10 is already H.264 and in the proper resolution for the iPhone, Toast 10 is smart enough not to bother re-encoding it. However, if you have other types of videos, you can have Toast 10 or DVKitchen encode them for you and then add them to the Toast 10 streaming list.

Roxio’s user interface on the iPhone or iPod Touch