Need some streaming reliability

[fmw]

Thanks for the review!

Interesting issue you were having with XBMC. I cannot say what it is doing that, but I have been running XBMC on my nexus 7 for a little while and it will happily play network content for me.

My pleasure. When I navigate to a music file on my network and click on a file name, instead of playing it, it downloads it to MX2 box and then displays it on the screen. At that point I can play it with XBMC from the MX2's memory. It must the implementation of XBMC. Perhaps I just need to download the app from Google Play and try that. If it works on your Android tablet, it should work on the MX2. When I have some time I'll get it figured out or maybe go with a different player. Another alternative would be plug in a memory card and fill it up with files.

 

[Grador]

Are you navigating to the files in xbmc, or via a file manager? If you are doing it via a file manager it that would explain the issue.

Edit: that is of course if you can manage to get xbmc to find network shares. I've had intermittent problems with this, the android version is super buggy.

Edit 2: xbmc is not available on the play store, you can only download it from xbmc.org

Edit 3: upnp shares seem to work fine though (slingbox uses upnp so you already have a server set up)

 

[fmw]

Problem solved. As it turns out, I had installed the Plex media server on my network when I was doing research. Plex has an Android app and that works like gangbusters. Plex is also DLNA compatible so I was able to play music from my network on my cell phone and even my BD player. Pretty slick. I like it better than XBMC.

 

[jcunwired]

^^ The interface isn't the greatest but I run Plex server for my mobile devices via the Plex app on Roku for the one display in my home without a media extender. It's a great solution provided you have the processing power to transcode video.

 

[fmw]

I wasn't even thinking of video. I don't have any movies recorded other than on the DirecTV Genie box. But I can see the media player would be good for that and photos too. It is a flexible technology. I need to get busy putting together some playlists.

 

[jcunwired]

^^ The interface isn't the greatest but I run Plex server for my mobile devices and via the Plex app on Roku for the one display in my home without a media extender. It's a great solution provided you have the processing power to transcode video.

Edited for clarity. Plex does nothing for sentence structure on mobile devices

I wasn't even thinking of video. I don't have any movies recorded other than on the DirecTV Genie box. But I can see the media player would be good for that and photos too. It is a flexible technology. I need to get busy putting together some playlists.

Plex does a great job with both recorded TV and mkv files (1080p AVC/AC3) that are normally served from Windows Media Center. I was tickled pink that I didn't have to buy yet another Xbox.