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Help Home streaming server?

Claghorn

Claghorn

Android Enthusiast
Since everyone seems worried about the small storage size and no SD slot, I am wondering if it will be possible to stream movies and music off my home server to the Nexus? Video seems more likely to be a problem than audio. What sort of codecs are native on Android? I can play virtually everything with mplayer on linux, but I suspect the same is not true with whatever video player is available on the Nexus.
 
Claghorn said:
Since everyone seems worried about the small storage size and no SD slot, I am wondering if it will be possible to stream movies and music off my home server to the Nexus? Video seems more likely to be a problem than audio. What sort of codecs are native on Android? I can play virtually everything with mplayer on linux, but I suspect the same is not true with whatever video player is available on the Nexus.
Click to expand...

It's android, you can use other video players. In fact VLC (a name you should be familiar with) just released their beta client today.
http://www.droid-life.com/2012/07/02/official-vlc-beta-goes-live-outside-of-us-vlc-direct-pro-free-lets-you-stream-content-from-pc-to-mobile/

You can probably access your media over DLNA as well, for generic streaming.
Music can be uploaded to Google Music (well, 20,000 tracks at least).

EDIT: VLC Direct Pro should do what you are looking for. DLNA is still the standard, and it wouldn't surprise me if you couldn't stream that way.
 
Check out Plex. I just installed it on my Linux home server last weekend (they also have windows and mac versions). The mobile app you have to pay for ($4.99) but it will allow you to stream anything you have on your server to your phone. It will also work with PS3, roku, Internet tvs, etc. One nice thing is that you can set it up to stream to your phone even if you're not on your home network, without having to mess with port forwarding on your router. Since the Nexus 7 is wifi only, you'll still need to be connected somehow, but stuff like this makes me care less that I ordered the 8 GB version.
 
I use a synology disk station that streams to all my devices including ANdroid.

On Windows machines I use VLC on the client side.

On Android Tabs I use VLC and MX Video player via ESFile explorer. Map the drive to the android and browse the directories via ES File. Click and launch MX Player. Works great.

We also played with TVersity - need a PC for this one (synology is a NAS) - it indexes your media files and sets up a website with the content. Click the link and launch / stream whatever you want from the browser.
 
Flatland2D said:
Check out Plex. I just installed it on my Linux home server last weekend (they also have windows and mac versions). The mobile app you have to pay for ($4.99) but it will allow you to stream anything you have on your server to your phone. It will also work with PS3, roku, Internet tvs, etc. One nice thing is that you can set it up to stream to your phone even if you're not on your home network, without having to mess with port forwarding on your router. Since the Nexus 7 is wifi only, you'll still need to be connected somehow, but stuff like this makes me care less that I ordered the 8 GB version.
Click to expand...

Second this, I also have it running on a Linux file server (You can run it on Windows too). Beautiful interface, and one of the better working products out there.
 
Downloaded plex based on this thread - all I can say is wow.

Amazing interface and functionality.

Not sure I understand the business model - seems like you get a lot for free on the server side with free windows client. and the 4.99 android client is a no brainer.

Question - looks like this thing can down-res the videos for streaming as needed - anyone use it outside the house on 3g or 4 g? Does it work good?

What does the data usage look like?
 
Just used part of my Play Store credit to purchase Plex for Android.

I've got it installed on my home server and it seems to work well!
 
XBMC will stream media off your local server and plays quite nicely on the N7
I've tried one of the builds which was on xda-developers, no problems for me.

I couldn't get vlc to run on the N7 at all, but it's just beta yet so can't complain.

Once there are stable releases of these out i'm sure they'll both work well.
 
Highland Ranger said:
Downloaded plex based on this thread - all I can say is wow.

Amazing interface and functionality.

Not sure I understand the business model - seems like you get a lot for free on the server side with free windows client. and the 4.99 android client is a no brainer.

Question - looks like this thing can down-res the videos for streaming as needed - anyone use it outside the house on 3g or 4 g? Does it work good?

What does the data usage look like?
Click to expand...

Yes it does work well over 4g (not sure about 3g). I get smooth playback and excellent quality. Keep in mind, its pretty demanding to transcode video on the fly, especially HD videos, so you'll need a beefy server. Something like a high end dual core or quad core will do nicely.
 
I use zumocast. A while back someone from xda forums extracted the install file (meant only for motorola devices) and made it available for all devices. I've used it on my nexus 7 to stream movies/music and it works like a charm except for the fact it is not compatible with all videos. I will say that the quality is sometimes down-resed to what it would be like watching it on your computer. I've also tested the video streaming over sprint 4g and seems to be smooth for playing a video.
 
Highland Ranger said:
Downloaded plex based on this thread - all I can say is wow.

Amazing interface and functionality.

Not sure I understand the business model - seems like you get a lot for free on the server side with free windows client. and the 4.99 android client is a no brainer.

Question - looks like this thing can down-res the videos for streaming as needed - anyone use it outside the house on 3g or 4 g? Does it work good?

What does the data usage look like?
Click to expand...

I haven't tracked my data usage, but on my Droid Bionic with a 3G connection Plex reduces the resolution a bit to maintain a good bit bitrate.

On a 4G connection it gets much better, but is still reduced compared to when you are on your local Wi-Fi connection.

I haven't been able to try it using tethering because whenever I try to use a bandwidth-intensive application it seems like I lose my connection somehow.
I'm using FoxFi, but I'm not sure if that's related or not.
 
I've been using Subsonic on my home server for Music. I think it does video too, but I haven't messed with that aspect yet.

Works great, WiFi or over 4g, super customizable, and the program itself is cheap after a nice free trial. The Android and iOS apps are free. A big plus because you can serve out to as many devices as you want without having to buy the mobile app for them all.
 
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