Streaming video from a Windows share to the Galaxy Nexus

[fossicker]

I thought I'd share my recent, successful, efforts to get my Galaxy Nexus to stream video files from my Acer Windows Home Server.
I found two methods that work without rooting, as I can't root my GNex because I have to accept no root directive from my employer via AirWatch
to get corporate email. It took me about a week to work out these two methods of streaming videos.

1) This is the first method I found, and it's a winner, but boy the app devs don't make it easy. One word: Qloud. There's a free and paid version on the Android Market, I'm still running the free version, it seems to have no functional restrictions, but it does show a few ads now and then. So great, you download Qloud from the Market and install.
https://market.android.com/details?id=mobi.qiss.vega.ad&hl=en
What next? Well, you need a server app. But where to get? www.qloud.com is a blank page. But then I found this Facebook page:
Which has a download link for the Windows Qloud Server software, which leads you to the download page here:
https://sites.google.com/a/qiss.mobi/qiss/about/tos/download/QloudServerSetup.zip?attredirects=0&d=1
Phew!

The Qloud server is a RTSP server that you point at your bucket of videos, and then you point your Qloud Android app to the IP address of the Qloud server.
There is some transcoding that goes on, which means you have to have a hefty machine to run the Qloud server, which can run as an app, or as a Windows service.
It takes quite a few seconds for Qloud on Android to list the files in your video bucket, but from there it's zippy. The video quality is great, and the transcoding level can be adjusted by changing bandwidth settings. With a 802.11G wireless router, I found the vid qual to be quite good even set at 1024Kb.

I just don't understand why Qloud doesn't have a formal web site. After you install the Qloud server, look under Start | Qloud and you'll see some URL shortcuts to their various strange Qloud/Qiss Facebook pages.

The best part about Qloud is that you can set up a port forward through your router, and then access the Qloud server from anywhere in the world. You just have to pay attention to your wireless network, as the transcoding level must be set lower if you're trying 3G, or something slowish.

2) Coming from a CM7 Nook Color, I was used to using CIFSManager to mount my video share, and then I could play them streamed with any Android video player. But since my GNex is unrooted, no such luck. I tried 15 different Android file managers that claimed to do SMB, but they only allowed me to copy files, not stream them. But then I finally found
Antec Explorer. Connect to your Windows-shared video bucket per usual. Find a video you want to play. Press and hold -- hold on, what's that? "Open As" brings you to two choices: Stream or Cache. Choose Stream. Then choose your Android video player of choice. I chose MoboPlayer, which opened the video, streaming, from my Windows share. Without the overhead of transcoding as long as you have the right codecs installed on your GNex.

It's a little strange, I'm curious how it works, because the path sent to the video player is http colon whack whack localhost : 8000 whack video.avi, so apparently Antec sets up a little web server and serves the streamed video to MoBo. Which makes me wonder if we couldn't stream from another computer via VNC if we pointed VNC to your gNex while Antec is serving up the file? Yep, you can, just tried it.

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[EnIXmA]

I use plex and its really good. its not free tho

[harshakavuri]

I use es file explorer for browsing the smb share and watch using mx vídeo player or dice player

I think Dice player has smb access built right into it now. And it's the best video player around for android with hardware acceleration

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk