How to Play ALL Video formats on Your iPad? (Updated with Solution)

Playing video on iPad is always a nightmare, you have to go through a couple of steps before you can sit down and start watching. First, you definitely need to convert your video into MP4 format, which normally take a long time to complete. After that, you will have to face another nightmare which is to sync the videos you have downloaded to your iPad through iTunes, another few minutes passes by. Alright, this post is not written to mock all iPad users (I'm a proud iPad owner myself), it is served to give you guys an idea to make your iPad a more user-friendly video player, no jailbreak necessary.

First of all, we need an app, an extraordinary one, which holds two benefits: fully functional and totally free. This app is called flex:player, developed by Persona Software, LLC. Pay attention here, as this app is going to completely transform your media watching experience! This player supports all the popular video formats, including MP4, mov, m4v, avi, divx, xvid, vob, flv, and much more! And listen, you don't have to convert any of your video files, all you need to do is open your iTunes, go to your iPad under "devices" at your iTunes left sidebar, click on "App" at the upper toolbar, and scroll down the page to reveal your "File Sharing" section. Look for the flex:player app, and at the right column, you can add any video that you want to transfer to your iPad. The transfer speed is quite fast, and based on my hands on experience, you don't even need to sync your device, just add the files and wait for the transfer to complete. Now you can unplug your iPad, launch flex:player, and start enjoying the HD movies and videos that you have downloaded, for free!!!

Note: This app is also available for iPhone and iPod.

Updates: The latest app test indicated that certain avi and mkv files can't be played in flex:player. Don't worry, the problem can be solved easily by downloading an app named PlayerX. Based on the test I've done, the mkv files and avi files that failed to play in flex:player are able to run smoothly on this app. However this app only works with iPad, which unfortunately leave iPod Touch and iPhone users no choice but to depend on flex:player.

My video lists with thumbnails

Playing SpyKids 4D in AVI format