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[Q] [REQ] Media Player with access to LAN

Hi Folks,
is there any media player that can access to files that are in my LAN e.c. on my server?
If i use Astro FE, or ES File Explorer I have access to my server, but i cannot chose which media player to take...
so what I need is a player that has access to LAN or a file explorer with which i can choose how to open a file...
(Main problem: there is no media player that plays ALL file formats + lan access)
Thank you,
Michael

So far I don't believe there's any that can do that, mainly due to fact that its not that easy to develop something like this. I believe it can be done, but because the app would probably need to be either some sort of client-server architecture or streaming the video, otherwise, if you would say like double click on a media file in astro on the LAN side, it would be downloading the video to your phone, then playing it locally rather than directly playing it from the LAN server/machine. Do correct me if i'm wrong though.

have also been waiting (im)patiently for this. can't believe it hasn't been done already!

Right.
That was no problem on my winmo 6.5 device, a lot of apps were able to do that.
An alternative would be a "Lan App" that simulats a "Lan" folder at the sd-card on which media programs have access.
The downloading thing junst happens with videos, that astro or ES File Manager cannot play. I can play a single MP3 for exaple but the screen than is black. So it seems as if there´s no comfortable app.
sad.
So can you recommend me some media app that maks the android device to a good looking media player for local files? (also that "easy" exercise is not as easy...)
thanks so far!

I use subsonic. It uses its own server software, which is a bit of a bummer, but it works great anywhere be it over wifi or 3g.
http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp
PS. There are clients for many platforms, including adobe air and a built in http server as well.
The subsonic client is available on the market I believe.

Vlc steamer can do both audio and video streaming great little app, but only works if the server can run vlan server
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

Where you able to find any app with la access?

There's an app in Google Play called 'Samba filesharing'. Browse for a media file on your pc, (through LAN of course) and open it. Works like a charm....
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

I am able to stream videos from a lan computer through ES File Explorer in HTC Desire Hd using the default streaming video player app. Takes a few seconds to buffer and works a charm. Not sure if this is just a HTC feature.

Thanks for the answers I also found one called bsplayer its great!!!!
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium

video/audio streaming from media server

I've been toying with the idea of using my laptop as a DLNA / uPNP media server. I have most of my video/audio assets stored on an external USB memory drive (it's actually a MP3 player with custom RockBox firmware...but I digress), so I could also use my little NSLU2 Linux server, providing I install all the required software on it.
At the top of anyone's list there should be at least: AllShare, AndroMote, Twonky (and iMediaShare for those wanting to share media *from* the tablet device). I tried them all, with varying degrees of success due to the type of media server I was running on my Mac OS X laptop. Plex doesn't seem to provide this feature so I ended-up using TVMOBiLi instead, which provides a not-so-user-friendly web-based interface. There are other advanced servers, such as miniDLNA, uShare, FireFly or MediaTomb, but this was getting far too time-consuming so I stopped there.
In fact, I ended-up using VLC Player with its built-in "web interface" feature (essentially a streaming server that can be controlled remotely), and VLC Stream & Connect on the Android tablet. It works great, and the live transcoding of the video was pretty satisfying (only minor glitches due to re-synchronizing the A/V streams from time to time...probably some settings I can tweak in VLC-S&C). The nice thing about DLNA / uPNP is that it is a discoverable service, that clients normally automatically detect on a LAN. VLC offers the same level of "it just works", and allows me to browse my media files directly from the tablet. Nifty.
A more advanced method is to share a folder on the media server via Samba / SMB / CIFS (works on Windows, Linux and Mac), to mount the shared directory on the Android tablet via a custom-built CIFS kernel module. Then any basic file explorer will "see" the remote files as local files, which results in video/audio players being "tricked" into thinking they are working with local files, when opening media assets from the file explorer. Conversely, using Astro (with SMB support) or ES File Explorer we can access network files via the smb: protocol, but video/audio players are unlikely to support opening media via this kind of URL (most players only support local files). Also note that the transfer speed may be problematic depending on the required media bitrate...anyone to test full HD video streaming ?
Follow this link for more info:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=9278963&postcount=7

Hi.
I use VLC Stream & Convert and it works nicely except audio-video delay.
For me is more important to understand how to stream my video in internet to watch them when I'm outside of my home network.
Previously I use HTTP protocol in Maemo OS , but in Android OS and RTSP things are different.
daniel.weck, do you have experience with this?

stefanopolis said:
Hi.
I use VLC Stream & Convert and it works nicely except audio-video delay.
For me is more important to understand how to stream my video in internet to watch them when I'm outside of my home network.
Previously I use HTTP protocol in Maemo OS , but in Android OS and RTSP things are different.
daniel.weck, do you have experience with this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
VLC Stream & Convert supports both HTTP and RTSP I think, there are many options in both the server (VLC Player) and the client (VLC S&C). Streaming content from a source within your LAN to an external destination on the internet requires a particular setup:
* fixed IP WAN address at your home broadband connection (or a dynamic one that is identifiable).
* router with NAT and firewall configured so that some ports are open to the local LAN IP address that serves content. See the VideoLan documentation for UDP/TCP protocol ports.

Vlc-based solutions are not really solutions. I for one have the vast majority of my media on a ion-based htpc which just doesn't do well converting on the fly. What we really need is a good dlna client for the tab, like allshare but better.

Have you tried Andromote and Twonky?
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App

stream media (movies) to phone?

Alright so I am looking for a way to stream media from my Windows7 machine to my phone in a nice easy way if possible over my local wifi network for now, over the internet would be a plus... I am running a 2.3.3 rom but my biggest problem I think is getting software to turn my computer into a media server that my phone can recognize and then start streaming media from my media hard drive...
Any ideas or suggestions... would love to know what you guys are using!
Thanks!

I use serviio to stream all my movies and shows to all devices in the house, for the phone to see all shares I use upnplay and mobo player for unsupported formats. Also if you have smart share on stock builds that works really good.

Plex works best, I've tried many alternatives.
Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk

Ya Plex is awesome, I completely forgot about it. Plex shows you artwork for all your media, very clean look. You can also set it so you can access it over WiFi or 3g from anywhere. As long as you have a decent upload.

ES File Explorer
allows you to view shared files over LAN. just share the folder you want to view (or put it in the "Public" user folder). Built in video player and image viewer.

VLC does this as well.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.vlcdirect.vlcdirect&feature=search_result

Just open up a share to the folder, and provided your rom (well, more specifically, kernel) has cifs support, it's easy. If you don't want to mount shares manually there is an app in the market that does it. (I think it's cifs manager, if memory serves.)

[Q] Wifi Music Streaming

I'm looking for an app that will let me stream music that I have saved on my computer to my TF over my home network. I have my network all set up for sharing and everything. I've been using File Expert and more recently Antek to stream videos over SMB, which is all well and good, but it kind of sucks for music when I can only stream one file at a time. I'd like something that I can designate a network location as a music library and then have access to all of my music and so on and so forth. Does such a thing exist? Even if I have to use a program on the PC in conjunction with the app, that would be super.
I cannot use Google Music here in Canada (unless that has changed recently) or else I probably would.

Tyfighter said:
I'm looking for an app that will let me stream music that I have saved on my computer to my TF over my home network. I have my network all set up for sharing and everything. I've been using File Expert and more recently Antek to stream videos over SMB, which is all well and good, but it kind of sucks for music when I can only stream one file at a time. I'd like something that I can designate a network location as a music library and then have access to all of my music and so on and so forth. Does such a thing exist? Even if I have to use a program on the PC in conjunction with the app, that would be super.
I cannot use Google Music here in Canada (unless that has changed recently) or else I probably would.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What you need is dlna server and client. transformer already comes with program that supports it. It's called "mynet". On pc you can use windows media player to share you music.

Ps3 media server is the best PC side app ive used for this sort of thing, never tried it with the tf101 but works great with a ps3 or wd tv live.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk 2

Maybe Audiogalaxy is what you are looking for? It is what I use to stream music from my PC to my Transformer. It's very easy to use.

I use PlugPlayer. It picks up on any DLNA servers so no additional PC services needed. I also use subsonic for remote access away from home, but it does use a PC service.

Need help on streaming audio files from SMB or AFP or NFS share to DLNA receiver

The title pretty much sums it up. I want my android device to take the music from an SMB share on my NAS (not DLNA server, I prefer not to use this function) and pass it to a wireless DAC through DLNA protocol, without transcoding the files, so different bit depth and frequency files would be transferred as they are.
I spent some time on research and these are the (possible) solutions that I have come up with. I hope someone had similar experience and was able to make it work as intended, and also can share their expertise:
1. The only app I found, that supports SMB as a source and can cast the music through DLNA is Neutron Music Player. It would be perfect, but it transcodes the files and outputs a single stream, not separate files through DLNA, which probably uses more resources on android and interferes in the DLNA receiver's job (if anybody is using the app and is able to cast the music without transcoding, please reply or PM me soon, because the trial period is running out and I am not convinced yet that I need to buy it..);
2. I think Kodi could also be perfect, but it doesn't have the cast function natively. I saw some workarounds, like using Localcast app to stream files from Kodi, but couldn't get it to work. And I think this approach is more suited for streaming single files. Please correct me if I'm wrong and it is possible to stream whole playlists this way, including party mode;
3. There are some players that can cast the music. Would have to check if they transcode the files, but I guess most do not (for example MediaMonkey, which I successfully use on the PC for the same purpose), but they do not support SMB as a music source. Now if there was a way to mount the SMB share in android file system and let these apps handle it as an ordinary folder on the phone.. Well, I guess there is a way, but I was not able to figure it out. I tried mount manager and CIFS manager. Maybe they stopped working on newer versions of android. Also some file explorers probably can access the SMB, but how to do it system wide? If someone was able to mount an SMB or AFP or NFS share on Android 7 (nougat), so it is accessible for all apps, can you share your solution please?

Well, it seems that the third alternative seems to have the best chances to be implemented in my setup. Here's how I mounted my NAS's shared folder to my android filesystem:
Install busybox (installing busybox means installing it in the playstore, and then opening the busybox app and pressing "install" one more time inside the app)
Write the following commands in terminal app (i liked Termux because you can paste the commands in it):
su
busybox mount iocharset=utf8 -t cifs -o username=guest,rw,noperm,iocharset=utf8 //192.168.0.106/xxx /data/media/0/xxx
I think the kernel should support CIFS filesystem to do this. Not sure if su is needed, but I guess it is. Also not sure about "username=guest,password=guest" part if the network share does not require a password, but if it does, you should enter your username and password here. Also, and most importantly - "/data/media/0" must be used for the media apps to see the mounted folder in internal storage, /storage/emulated/0 didn't work for me, I could only access the share by file explorers that way. Also, maybe an unmount command should be used when accessing the shared files is no longer needed. Will have to test what happens if the tablet is disconnected from home network or if the NAS is turned off.
Edit: you should use iocharset=utf8 in the command if your filenames or directories include special characters, and I guess it won't do any harm even if they don't. Also, If the android device is battery saving mode, the mount command doesn't work (took a while to figure this out..)
Now I'm still searching for a music player that could handle a relatively large music library and cast the music to a DLNA client.
So far I tried GoneMAD Music Player and PlayerXtreme, but couldn't cast the music with them, even though I think the descriptions of these apps stated that they do support casting. If someone had a similar problem and solved it, can you tell me how?
Edit: apparently DLNA and google cast are different formats, non-compliant with each other. So if an app can "cast" its output, it frequently means it can only do it to chromecast devices (dang..)
Anyway, if someone knows a good music player which could scan the files to its library by itself and would not rely on android's media scanner AND would support casting the music to DLNA clients - can you reply here or send me a PM?

Another update:
If anyone else is seeking for a similar solution, I think doubleTwist player uses a combination of android's media scanner and it's own directory scanner to import music. So the method with mounting the SMB share with busybox kind of works here. But it doesn't import duplicate files (support told me they are thinking of doing something about that), so if you have same songs (maybe slightly different versions) on several folders, you can't import them all, yet.
Another option is n7player with Toastercast plugin. It works kind of good, but it takes a long time to scan the music folders (about 4 hours for ~14000 songs). And I'm not sure yet if you have to rescan the whole library when you add new music, but I fear you do..
And one more promising app would be Emby Server for Android, it can access the SMB share on its own, so I guess it would be a cleaner solution. It is still in beta stage, so for now it doesn't find my DLNA renderer, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that to be solved.
Edit: So, I have a problem with n7player and doubleTwist. They both stop playing after awhile if the screen goes off. If anyone has any idea how to avoid that without keeping the screen on all the time, I would really appreciate them.
Edit2: The only way I found to stream music to DLNA with screen off is disabling Doze mode with the command:
dumpsys deviceidle disable
followed with dumpsys deviceidle enable when I no longer need it. Now just have to figure out how to automate this with tasker.