Database Users

A slingplayer or Orb Android equivalent?

Just wondering if there is any third party streaming software out there in the Android market similar to Slingplayer and Orb that can stream television and or live tv from home...
Slingplayer for symbian s60 v3 worked flawlessly and orb too, just wish to find a solution to put on the Nexus,
thanks

can i take your comment to mean that the nexus one won't stream from mycast.orb.com?

Orb just released 3 android apps to the market. Get out your wallet...

That is correct.... I've been trying to get it work for 2 days now and no workie.
Just to make sure Orb has the testing site, http://test.orb.com to test to see which formats are playable. None work

Yeah that does suck. I wonder if it's a codec thing. Does orb transcode?

on winmo, i've never had a problem. ever. it should transcode, and puts it into an asx stream file. opened with several different mobile players, and static players. this bites :/ i was excited about streaming my media to my new phone, and now that's not gonna work either? skype broken, orb broken, wtf? why all the hate?

Found this on orb.. it works!!! So till the app comes and makes it easier to view media use this.
It took a while to figure out and hopefully I can save some people time. It took some time and frustration but got everything working. This is my very first posting. I have a Moto Droid I purchased a couple days ago. I have not downloaded any additional browsers or media players. I am watching high quality live TV from my Orb account. There are a couple key steps in the process.
1) Sign up for an Orb account from your home computer (if you haven't)
2) Sign into your account from your home computer
3) Click Settings in the top right and select 3GP Format (.sdp)
4) Launch browser on Droid. Clear Cache and Cookies
5) Log into your your Orb account from your browser on your Moto Droid
6) IMPORTANT: Select Settings on bottom middle of page
7) IMPORTANT: Select Stream on top right of page
8) IMPORTANT: Select 3GP Format (.sdp). NOT AAC or AMR versions
9) Select Save
That should do it. Works great for me with Default browser and media player. Hope this helps....
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pimpalicious. that's awesome news. i tested that android does work through orb, because my sister's stock g1 is streaming from my computer right now. just wanted to insure that the nexus one isn't 'crippled' for any reason.
not all file formats will stream out though. one of the videos i have must be encoded with a wonky format, because while i can watch it on pc, it won't stream to ps3 or through orb

the quality compared to my pro2 is night and day for some reason which makes me happy!

That does work well and works with my webcam, useless, but still kinda cool.

i've had orb on my pc for a spell, so i could stream music/movies to my work pc. default browser on N1 had no problem streaming from mycast.orb.com on several movies of mine, through wifi. not everything works, but i suspect that's codec conflicts

For those of you interested, at CES, Sling confirmed that they have an Android app in development for Android. I don't have the link handy at the moment, but it was in an Engadget article. No time frame was mentioned, unfortunately.

Can confirm with previous posts that Orb is working brilliantly on the N1
Thanks

[Q] PlayOn for Android

Has anyone tried the new PlayOn app available for Android? I was disappointed to learn of Netflix's presence on Android will only encompass future Qualcomm powered phones. (Still hoping someone will be able to modify it). But PlayOn seems like the next best thing for Netflix streaming to our Android powered HD2's.
Just looking for any review or feedback. I will download the server app to my computer tonight and give an update for those that are interested.
Update: No one interested? Oh well. I said I'd update so... Confirmed. Netflix does indeed work with this app. Although, I had problems with the actual app. Was able to log into my Netflix account through the app; browse and view my instant queues but it wouldn't play for some reason. (Might be due to my slow internet from within my house though). But using stock browser and going to the playon mobile site I was able to stream my movies. Hulu did not work for some reason though. I have a modified flash to use with my hulu app and i thought that might be the problem. Uninstalled it and installed flash from market but hulu still asks me to install flash even going through playon. So not sure what to make of it. All in all: use hulu app if you want hulu. use playon if you want netflix. =]

What rom and version of flash player are you using. Not working on core droid rom for me.

NexusHD2 Gingerbread by tytung. And I use a modified apk of flash I found somewhere on xda. Lets me play Hulu. I think it was in the Nexus One threads somewhere. I don't remember.

i tried it. its slow. it works
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA Premium App

I have had this software for quite some time and I must say it is great, best app I have. Not only for Netflix access on my GTab but all the other content I can watch on my phone as well as my tablet. More than worth the price, I can't imagine not having this software and app. I am able to stream videos from my home computer ,using my HD2 as a wifi router, to my GTab. The video quality over 3G is more than acceptable and the stream is usually steady enough to watch a movie or a live sporting event using ESPN 3 (yes it gives you access to that plus Hulu and about 15 othe chanels) I know I sound like a commercial but I have no stake in the company. Its a great piece of software that I feel everyone who watches online content would love and appreciate.

I know this topic is from while ago, but since it discusses PlayOn, I didnt want to open new one.
I installed PlayON as well. Server runs Ok on my PC, I am able to watch Hulu with my FAT+ and TV.
Recently got HTC Sensation 4G. Installed the PlayOn app, in the Server on my PC I enabled MObile access, router configured automatically, Mobile access test is green - passed.
Here is the problem - on my phone I can see the server, I can browse channels, but when i go to a show, I just see cover art and few lines of info in a table below the cover art.
Nothing is clickable and cant make it start anything.
I am using LAN access if that matters.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Playon issue with Rooted Gingerbread Bionic
I am having similar issues with my new rooted Bionic. My rooted Droid2 worked fine yesterday - but, my Bionic does not stream Playon on wifi or on 4g/3g. I don't know if it is an issue with being rooted - since I rooted the Bionic as soon as got it. I am able to find the server and browse channels, however, it will not play videos. It displays the first frame and then just goes black and eventually displays "Stream not found null". Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Q] Media Streaming

Hi All,
I'm wondering if anyone has had any success streaming media to their A7. I currently have a NAS drive on my network and stream media to all my other devices (Archos 70, Archos 5 Android, EVO, etc.) but for some reason I cannot get the A7 to actually play anything from this network location.
I have been able to navigate to the files themselves, but playing them has not worked out so well. I've tried a variety of Apps and different file formats, but none seem to work. I can attempt to open files, and even get prompted to use various Apps, but nothing seems to work after that, it just fails. Anyone have any ideas or success with this effort please let me know as this is a biggie for me.
Sorry if this is a dup question, as I could not find anything about this for this device in particular.
And many thanks to Dexter, you've made this device surpass it's otherwise limited capabilities. Seems silly such a quality product is being left behind by the Stream, but this seems to be the model of all tablet makers these days. Pump them out as fast as possible regardless of full functionality and forget about them a month later!

The only way I've gotten streaming to work is by using PlayOn.

hi I can access all my movies on my hard drives and play on my a7 this way
download TVersity media server from tveristy.com. I just use the free version. It will change your home page when you install it so you will need to change it back. Install that on your pc and then add your movie files to the library.
On your a7 download a app called skifta from the market and install that. when you run this choose a media source choose TVeristy media server. Under player choose your a7.
then choose browse and play media you will see your library files you added in tversity and some other stuff. You will need a video player installed on your a7. I have act 1 video player and also rockplayer. It will let you choose which to use when you select movie.
select one and your movie should start. Your movies have to be in a compatable format.
it also will let you play music and view photos
I also have a wd live movie box on my tv. With this same setup I can redirect the movie to wdlive box by choosing it as player and the it will playback the movie on my tv.

Thanks for the advice (both of you). I was really hoping for a more direct approach though. I've used apps like Orb that require you to run a host computer, and my NAS drive (Buffalo Linkstation) has a web app built in, but both these methods have proven very slow and often frustrating when trying to access via mobile networks. It just seems odd to me that the A7 doesn't do this while most other Android hardware does. Granted I'm more familiar with Archos products and they specialize in media players. Will keep trying though, Thanks!

DANOinSD said:
Granted I'm more familiar with Archos products and they specialize in media players. Will keep trying though, Thanks!
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the platform you refer to is different from Tegra2/Nvidia, and you can blame Nvidia for the stock codecs they support.. they partly added mkv's now in latest update.. but 1080p mkv's still stutter on a7 and other tegra2 devices..
LG with their Optimus 2X added their own custom player, and since its incorporated into the framework, its hard to make it run on other devices for now.. but nvidia is primary source for what we can use it for now..
archos is a different story and they havent got what tegra2 can offer for the future, so it might play alot of media's but not perfect for android at all.

Thanks for the info Dex!
Think I'm gonna get a XOOM (been drooling over some honey), then I can officially make my A7 a tinker toy!
by the way, the new 1.41 rom kicks ass, the motoblur keyboard is soo much better!

Streaming Radio

Are there any apps for the windows phone that can play .asf streams? This is driving me bonkers, my Tilt 2 played them just fine!
Thanks!

sfpcservice said:
Are there any apps for the windows phone that can play .asf streams? This is driving me bonkers, my Tilt 2 played them just fine!
Thanks!
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Click to collapse
Amusingly enough, no. Microsoft currently doesn't support it's own streaming media. Reason #1433 why Windows Phone 7 is still the definition of the phrase "cluster f**k".

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Fo.../thread/4f05a703-d642-4410-b73f-0b68d2409b91/
check that post out it might help
Words of wisdom: with a brand new platform there are new things every day: apps, capabilities, and hacks. If you are not up to date with information, you should probably not skew it for others. Try to be helpful.

That's OLD news and playing on the pc doesn't mean it plays on the phone, which it doesn't. Watch Resco Radio. If anything is going play a Microsoft media stream, it's going to be that. Last time I checked with them, they said (and I confirmed) that WP7 didn't play any Microsoft media formats. Is that more helpful?

Note 2 and Plex: WOW !

I saw a colleague toying with Plex at home, showing off his collection of videos on an Ipad at work (with a few decent black zones... LOL) over the 100 Mbit link we have there...
Well, just installed Plex media server myself on my PC, the Plex client on the Note 2 and it ROCKS !
Yesterday I sat at a coffeecounter in our mall, browsing via 3G, opened my OpenVPN to home and took a moment to view my videos at home in exquisite quality on the Note 2. My wife couldn't help herself seeing the videos and pulled it out my claws to go and watch herself...
Big screen, 16:9, good resolution and speed: all you need... :laugh: :laugh:

Yrcimim said:
I saw a colleague toying with Plex at home, showing off his collection of videos on an Ipad at work (with a few decent black zones... LOL) over the 100 Mbit link we have there...
Well, just installed Plex media server myself on my PC, the Plex client on the Note 2 and it ROCKS !
Yesterday I sat at a coffeecounter in our mall, browsing via 3G, opened my OpenVPN to home and took a moment to view my videos at home in exquisite quality on the Note 2. My wife couldn't help herself seeing the videos and pulled it out my claws to go and watch herself...
Big screen, 16:9, good resolution and speed: all you need... :laugh: :laugh:
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Click to collapse
Why did you have to VPN??? Does Plex not allow for outside access?

I never knew anything about Plex. What a very neat application to have at home and on mobile devices.
Thanks for sharing and I'll definitely be taking advantage of this once T-Mobile's note 2 is released. Thank God for unlmtd 4G data.

Milkman00 said:
Why did you have to VPN??? Does Plex not allow for outside access?
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Plex allows everything. It's just that *I* don't allow much: I use my LAN also for home office and as a networkmanager I have too much sensitive client stuff there. But OpenVPN has no human-measurable impact on the speed and a.t.m. you don't even need to root anymore to use it.
A tip: in order to get subtitles working you need to set Direct Play on Disabled in the Advanced Settings of the Plex client on the phone...
Have fun.
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda app-developers app

Eh, I'll stick with Splashtop. You can view all of your videos, including DVD's burned to your harddrive. With Plex, you cannot.

Just got it set up myself. I really like it plays every video on my computer.
Any idea if it'll be updated for multiwindow?

-BoneZ- said:
Eh, I'll stick with Splashtop. You can view all of your videos, including DVD's burned to your harddrive. With Plex, you cannot.
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Click to collapse
Huh? Do you even know what is or what it's capable of? And I'd like to see you watch a 1080P video on your hard drive over HSPA using SplashTop. I have a terabyte of music, movies, and TV shows on my home server that I can access from anywhere. You can even share libraries with other people using Plex so they can access your stuff and vice versa. There are Plex clients for iOS (desktop and mobile), Windows (desktop and mobile), and Android. I have three Google TV's and stream audio and video from Plex anywhere in the house. It transcodes on slower connections so you can use it on as low as a 3-5MB connection. And as you can see its meta-tagging is unbelievable at indexing and organizing your media. Everyone I know that uses it swears buy it.
http://plexapp.com/

I'm using Plex for last 2 years and it's absolutely awesome and no comparison with any other similar media managers.
1. It's light
2. It's cross platform. You can have server in Mac, Windows, Linux whatever. You have clients in Android, iOS and most importantly and interestiny clients for devices, like Samsung TV, LG TV etc.
3. It's open source project
And so many other things. I have like 10TB of media and I use Plex with my Samsung LED TV, Note 2, Galaxy 10.1 Tab, MacBook Air and it is absolutely fabulous.
Please try it and I guarantee you'll love it.

i tried it and its crap . XBMC is 10 times better.

So this streams films from my PC to my phone?

I love Plex but for some weird reason I can't get stuff unless I am on the same Wifi connection, any idea what I need to change?

I used to use something very similar called Subsonic. Haven't ran it in a loooong time but it didn't support video nearly as well as Plex appears to.
Using a VPN is an easy way to setup a secure connection to your LAN while away from home without opening up ports etc. However not sure I want to jump through those hoops again with Plex and my Note 2. Wonder how hard it is to setup Plex to be open on the net? Hmm I'll look into it. Thanks for pointing out this app though OP. Looks 100x prettier than Subsonic ever was.
Aw lame, just tried installing the PC media server and it requires Bonjour. I hate Apple -_- refuse to install any of their stuff on my machine. Damn, that's a shame. The app looked really nice on Android.
Ok wow nevermind. I said screw it, installed Bonjour and setup the Plex media server. I then went into settings and disabled Bonjour discovery, then uninstalled it from my machine. I then setup Plex on Android and setup a myPlex account. Wow. On 4G right now testing at home, and man I can stream my movies in brilliant quality without any lag or buffer issues. AMAZING. This app owns Subsonic hands down.
Thanks OP!

djashjones said:
i tried it and its crap . XBMC is 10 times better.
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Care to elaborate? Maybe a few pros and cons? "It's crap" and "10 times better" aren't very descriptive to people interested in understanding the differences between the multiple approaches to storing, cataloging, and accessing their media.
AjunNg said:
So this streams films from my PC to my phone?
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IamPro said:
I love Plex but for some weird reason I can't get stuff unless I am on the same Wifi connection, any idea what I need to change?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll post some newbie tips later...

ok, i tried with my movie/tv/music collection as there is an app on my NAS for it. The scrapping i found was poor compared to xbmc. playback was abit poor on 1080p and the deal breaker was my music. i have loads of compilation albums and it showed up as seperate disks.
tried to find a way of installing a player on my win7 laptop but it seems only the server got installed.
I spent 4 hours playing around with and that was enough for me

djashjones said:
ok, i tried with my movie/tv/music collection as there is an app on my NAS for it. The scrapping i found was poor compared to xbmc. playback was abit poor on 1080p and the deal breaker was my music. i have loads of compilation albums and it showed up as seperate disks.
tried to find a way of installing a player on my win7 laptop but it seems only the server got installed.
I spent 4 hours playing around with and that was enough for me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
These type of programs try to be easy for an end user to understand, but at the end of the day you really are setting up a streaming server that has a database of files and has to transcode them on the fly. Unless you are very familiar with how these things work, you probably shouldn't be the one to set it up.
Granted once someone who knows what they're doing gets it setup, its easy for an end user to connect and enjoy their files in great quality all over the air. I myself streamed Star Wars in 720p with really high bitrate over 4G yesterday and had no hiccups. And that's not even on my Note 2, it was on my Thunderbolt that struggles to play 360p videos on Youtube. So the program and buffering IS efficient and quality, it just requires the proper setup.
As for music goes, I am a little concerned. My Thunderbolt apparently doesn't support WMA music files, and since most of my audio collection is just that, I am sorta screwed. Hoping my Note 2 which is out for delivery as we speak, has some form of WMA reading capability or else that's that

DaRkL3AD3R said:
These type of programs try to be easy for an end user to understand, but at the end of the day you really are setting up a streaming server that has a database of files and has to transcode them on the fly. Unless you are very familiar with how these things work, you probably shouldn't be the one to set it up.
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Click to collapse
^^^^^
This.
For Plex to metatag and display everything correctly your files and folders have to be organized and structured a certain way. It was a huge pain in the ass and took me several days to rename and reorganize my media initially so Plex could tag it. I didn't have to, but I wanted the UI to look pretty, clean, and professional so I made the commitment. Anything I added after the one-time organization was easy because I new the naming convention and structure to use. In a way, Plex made me more disciplined about how I stored my media which wasn't a bad thing.
djashjones said:
The scrapping i found was poor compared to xbmc.
i have loads of compilation albums and it showed up as seperate disks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can manually tag stuff that wasn't found properly via Media Manager on the server side. It's not perfect but it's no less perfect than other PC and Android taggers I've used.
playback was abit poor on 1080p
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Odd. It shouldn't be over a fast connection if Direct Play's enabled. It only transcodes when it detects buffering and even then adjusts up if the signal improves.
and the deal breaker was my music.. tried to find a way of installing a player on my win7 laptop but it seems only the server got installed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Their website's not the most intuitive. A lot of people mistake the Media Server for Media Center which is the client. Here's the link to the client if you ever want to try again.
http://plex.r.worldssl.net/plex-laika/0.9.5.4/Plex-Media-Center-v3213059-en-US.exe
People should use what works best for them and for you that seems like XBMC. Like DaRkL3AD3R said, getting Plex and your media files set up initially is a chore. Friends ooh and ah when the see Plex on my devices and want it too. When I tell them what's entailed they get less enthusiastic. That's why it's great to have so many different choices.

Would love to get this to work....be VERY nice to stream my vast move collection right to my note 2. I played with it a few hours with different settings and it still stutters the playback every few seconds. My wi-fi streams netflix fine...(scratch head).

Well good news. Got my Note 2 today and setup Plex on it, and success: I was able to stream WMA music files without error.
Back on my Thunderbolt I would get an invalid file type error. It just couldn't play them.

DaRkL3AD3R said:
Back on my Thunderbolt I would get an invalid file type error. It just couldn't play them.
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HTC does funky things to their video and audio players that deviate from stock and Plex craps out because the files it's looking for aren't in the correct system directory. I briefly had a Jetstream and couldn't get it to work and Plex support was kind of baffled by what HTC was doing based on the logcat I sent them. Plex worked great on my One X so I'm guessing their newer devices are following standards.

I tried plex on my ipad and it worked great with my htpc. However, now that xbmc has come for Android, I doubt I'll use plex again, simply because of how efficient networking, scraping and syncing between platforms work in xbmc. And of course because the rest of my million boxes all run xbmc
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