This giveaway is closed- winners will be notified later today!

The wean all of a sudden isn’t going well.  More on that tomorrow, as we see if the new mechanisms in place work.

We’ve got various iDevices in the house.  An iPad.  Iphones.  We’re Apple junkies, regardless of the effect it has sometimes on the wallet.  All told, the tech has been pretty good to me, I’m sure I’ve made more money supporting it out in town than it’s cost me overall.  My inner cheapness prevents me from buying the whammerdyne max-capacity iPhones, and making do with old tech long after the rest of the world has moved on.

Our video library is hosted on an older machine crammed full of relatively ancient hard drives, honestly, well in excess of what the laws of physics should allow.  I’m fairly sure I can cook a turkey with the waste heat coming off that machine.  As a result, the DVD rips we store on the iTunes running on that machine for the AppleTVs in the house far exceed the capacity of any given portable iDevice we may have.  The existing iTunes covers streaming to the AppleTV units, but not streaming to the portables.

I did some research, tried some free alternatives, then I found Stream to Me.  Stream to Me, by Matt Gallagher’s Projects With Love is a combination application for your Mac or PC, and an iDevice (iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch).  The Serve To Me part of the application is free for download- it’s the iDevice app that’s very inexpensive.  Given my limited budget, I splurged for it anyway when an iPad ostensibly to be used for Marissa and the Brother arrived in the house.

It’s an amazing, seamless solution for streaming entire libraries over a LAN to an iDevice.  The server application runs quietly and with very little footprint on our streaming computer running OSX Leopard.  The Serve to Me part of the application has transcoded on the fly many different containers, I’ve used MP4 H.264, AVI, and MKV files, all in 720p resolution and streamed them to the iPhone/iPad application with minimal pre-processing delay and no hiccuping in the video waiting for the 802.11g stream to catch up. 

Before you freak out on me, and say I’m pushing all this on you just because the developer gave me the app for free- he didn’t.  I purchased the app in the beginning of April after I thought it would be best for my problem.  It’s streamed the Brother’s baby signs DVDs as well as some Baby Einstein for Marissa.  It’s an awesome solution for a portable video player for us inside our network.

What he has done is give me five codes for you guys (assuming you’re readers in the United States, sorry to everybody else).  Here’s how you can enter:

• Leave a comment here, telling me what you’d use Stream to Me for.  Make sure we know how to contact you if you win!  A wall of text, a brief snippet, whatever you want.

• Follow us on twitter, and tweet the following: “I’ve entered to win STREAM TO ME developed by Matt Gallagher for my iDevice! at http://www.marissasbunny.com”

• Vote for us by clicking here, and then clicking the “click here and your vote will be added” text.  Email Marissa to tell us you’ve done so.

Each bulleted task will get you one entry.  Only do what you’re comfortable with!  If you don’t want to clog your twitter feed, we completely understand.  On July 6th at noon Marissa’s time, the contest ends.  Good luck!