The best streaming apps for your mobile and tablet
SO YOU’VE DOWNLOADED a nice little collection of videos on your home PC or home server. Now you’d like the ability to go hide in your bedroom, backyard or basement and watch them on your tablet or phone, without having to fight for time on the big screen. To do that, you’ll need an app that’s capable of streaming the video from your PC or NAS to your mobile, and this month, we have your guide to the best such apps. (For more on mobile storage devices, check out our feature on page 72.)
THE BEST MOBILE STREAMING APPS KODI
Kodi.tv Available on: Android and iOS (with effort) Once known as XBMC, Kodi is the god among media players, the one most people go to first when it comes to streaming from their home servers. It plays just about anything, supports multiple streaming protocols including DLNA and Windows File Sharing, can stream directly from a variety of internet sources like Twitch and YouTube and can be updated with some pretty amazing add-ons that can even stream directly from file sharing services and online hard drives.
It does take a little bit of setting up, though it’s not complicated. In Kodi, you have to add ‘sources’. You can designate your home server as a source, or the local storage on your mobile, or an SD-Card, a file share or UPnP/ DLNA and so on. And then you navigate to that source to browse it, and it will show all the content on that source.
It’s mostly for streaming locally. Technically, it can also stream over the internet, but that takes some more serious setting up involving port forwarding and secure shares, and we probably wouldn’t recommend it if you’re not an expert (Plex or Emby are better for that).
INFUSE
firecore.com/infuse Available on: iOS If you’re on iOS and couldn’t be bothered using trickery to get Kodi working, Infuse is a very solid replacement. It doesn’t have all the features of Kodi, but it’s arguably more intuitive to use and the latest version (5) has some really excellent additions, like native parental controls, subtitle imports, downloading movie and TV episode information from TheMovieDB and TVDB, as well as trakt support for keeping track of what episodes you’ve watched.
Like Kodi, you start with Infuse by adding media sources. You can add DLNA media shares, Windows File Sharing directories,
cloud services and local storage. You can use iTunes to transfer videos to your iOS devices and it will also work with Lightning storage devices. During setup, it will automatically scan your network for existing DLNA and Windows File Shares, making it very easy to add sources.
VLC FOR ANDROID/IOS
www.videolan.org/vlc/ Available on: Android and iOS VLC, the famous media player for PC, made its way to mobiles a few years back, and it’s fair to say it got off to a shaky start with unstable and limited apps. It has come a long way since then, so if you just want something simple that will play nearly any file you throw at it, it might be your answer. Unlike Kodi and Infuse, you don’t create sources per se — you just browse the network live. You can sync files to VLC using iTunes on your PC, but you can also stream directly from File Shares and DLNA servers. Just tap on the cone icon in the top left, select Local Network, and you’ll see a list of detected DLNA and file sharing servers. Then just select the server and navigate to the desired video. It could use some bookmarking systems, but the playback is smooth and fast.
PLEX
www.plex.tv Available on: Android and iOS Although it will cost you US$5 to unlock the functionality of the mobile client (unless you have a Plex Pass subscription, in which case the mobile unlock is part of the sub), Plex has gained massive popularity as a closed, easy-to-use system that lets you stream your media from anywhere.
Plex comes as a client and a server. The first thing you do is install the server on the device where your media is stored. Then you install the clients on all the devices that you want to play the media on, including your mobiles. As part of the setup, you create a Plex login, which automatically connects your clients with your servers (so you don’t have to worry about searching for them on the network).
The servers store more information than your typical media server. They also store episode information, trailers, a log of what you’ve watched, parental control settings, and can sync with cloud services. What’s more, you don’t have to be on the same network as your media — you can stream over the internet, bandwidth permitting (just make sure that you don’t get nuclear excess charges by streaming over 4G!) The mobile client also supports Chromecast to beam up to a big TV set.
EMBY
emby.media Available on: Android and iOS We covered Emby fairly extensively in our March issue (page 96), so we won’t retread it too much here, except to say that it operates in a very similar fashion to Plex, with both a server app and a client app that work together to create a system more capable than most systems using stock DLNA or Windows File Sharing. That includes details like extended movie and TV episode information, music lyrics, live TV and parental controls.
Like Plex, it’s also a commercial product, requiring that you purchase a subscription or pay a small fee to unlock the mobile client.