Infuse for iOS gains HDR support & dynamic range conversion on non-HDR devices

Thursday, aTV Flash Black developer FireCore released Infuse 5.6, its versatile media player app for iPhone and iPad, that now supports dynamic range conversion for HDR videos while bringing a whole new design to the iOS app. This follows the recent update to Infuse for Apple TV which brought support for HDR playback on the new Apple TV 4K.

The new version brings a fresh new look to the iPhone and iPad app that FireCore developer James Abeler tells me was built around the videos people love the most. “We’ve taken the best parts of Infuse, rebuilt them from the ground up using modern frameworks and made many other fine adjustments to get things just right,” he said in an email.

Infuse 5.6 is also optimized for iPhone X and uses all-new Metal based video rendering.

More important than the new look, Infuse 5.6 brings support for HDR video playback to iPhone and iPad. Currently, only iPhone X has a native HDR display (iPhone 8 renders HDR video using dithering because it lacks a HDR-compliant screen).

But if you don’t own an iPhone 8, iPhone X or Apple TV 4K, don’t fret: Infuse now offers the ability to perform dynamic range color conversion which allows you to play HDR video on older devices outfitted with non-HDR screens: you won’t get HDR’s expanded color range with brighter reds and greens, but at least colors will look accurate.

Infuse is easily the first iOS/tvOS app to feature dynamic range color conversion.

If you do have a modern TV set with native support for HDR video, or iPhone X, HDR video clips will look awesome in Infuse. Not only does the app feature hardware decoding of HDR video on supported devices, but also unlocks hours of extra battery life because resource-intensive video decoding no longer strains the CPU.

Hardware-assisted decoding of the Hi10P video format (H264-encoded 10-bit video) requires Apple’s A9 chip or later, meaning this feature is supported on iPhone 6s or later models, all iPad Pro models, the new 2017 iPad model and the latest Apple TV 4K.

Infuse availability

For a complete list of what’s new in Infuse 5.6, visit the official Infuse website.

Infuse for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV is a free download from App Store.

Advanced features are available without limitations as a $6.49 annual Pro subscription via the In-App Purchase mechanism. A free one-month trial of Infuse Pro is available within the app.

If you don’t want to subscribe, buy Infuse for iOS and tvOS outright for $12.99.