Panasonic Remote App Lets You 'Flick' Videos From Phone to TV [VIDEO]

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Ever wanted to quickly check out a video from your phone on your TV? If you have a Panasonic set, that just got a lot easier.

Panasonic recently updated its Viera Remote smartphone app with a new ability called Media Flick that lets you start streaming media to your set with just a finger swipe. It works for videos, photos, music and even website URLs (which open a browser on the set). Checking out the app today, I easily threw some footage of a school of fish onto the screen of a new Panasonic plasma TV by swiping the video to the top of my smartphone screen.

There are, as always, a number of catches. First -- and biggest -- is that you need a Panasonic TV, and not just any TV; it has to be one of the new 2012 models just starting to ship. Second, there's a little bit of lag since the app uses your local Wi-Fi to stream the content to your set (just like how you'd hook up a wireless printer). That also means you can only do it within range of the Wi-Fi, so if you were hoping you could flick to your home TV while on the go, that's a no. Finally, if you flick a video, it'll lose your place and start from the beginning.

Still, it's pretty impressive functionality if you have the right equipment. Certainly, other technologies bridge the phone-TV gap (Apple AirPlay among them), but Panasonic's solution is one of the most convenient we've seen. And for websites, you can even flick sites you're browsing onscreen back to the phone -- extremely helpful for sites with URLs so long that you'd normally need to copy and paste.

Panasonic updated its Android app on Google Play with Media Flick functionality earlier this month, and the company says the iOS version will see the update next month, pending Apple's approval.