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Any apps that stream movies from NAS?

C

Chic0

macrumors 6502
Original poster
I have Goodplayer, which will play various movie formats, but as you know, they need to be stored locally on the ipad itself.

Are there any apps that will enable me to play movies wirelessly from my NAS?

I bought Filebrowser thinking that this would allow me to do so, but it doesn't 🙁
 
just downloaded Buzz Player, it is very slow at browsing network, and network files.
I browsed a SMB file server, and it would not list any files in it, there were pictures and video in the folder.
Waste of money im afraid,, oh well lol !!
 
Already have filebrowser, but it doesn't seem to support my avi/mkv video formats.

Tried Air video demo, but it seems that it only allows you to stream from a computer

Not tried Buzz yet. I was going to, but after Brian's experience I'm not too sure I will now.
 
Chic0 said:
Already have filebrowser, but it doesn't seem to support my avi/mkv video formats.

Tried Air video demo, but it seems that it only allows you to stream from a computer

Not tried Buzz yet. I was going to, but after Brian's experience I'm not too sure I will now.
Click to expand...

Filebrowser just allows you to look for files. It doesn't play files. It will see all the files in the folder. Do you not have VLC to play those formats. I don't know one program that plays all formats so you might have to experiment a little.

Also, it might help if you list all the movie formats you want to see. Someone here might be able to help you a little more if they know exactly what formats you are using or trying to use.
 
rhett7660 said:
Filebrowser just allows you to look for files. It doesn't play files. It will see all the files in the folder. Do you not have VLC to play those formats. I don't know one program that plays all formats so you might have to experiment a little.

Also, it might help if you list all the movie formats you want to see. Someone here might be able to help you a little more if they know exactly what formats you are using or trying to use.
Click to expand...

This method should also work, although you'll be using two programs instead of one. If you have other needs for a network file browser, then give this a go. For a video player, I'd recommend AVplayerHD or Goodplayer over VLC...blasphemy, I know, but VLC is no longer the best option.
 
rhett7660 said:
Filebrowser just allows you to look for files. It doesn't play files. It will see all the files in the folder. Do you not have VLC to play those formats. I don't know one program that plays all formats so you might have to experiment a little.

Also, it might help if you list all the movie formats you want to see. Someone here might be able to help you a little more if they know exactly what formats you are using or trying to use.
Click to expand...

Just re-read your first post again. Didn't realise you could do 'open in' with Filebrowser.

Just tried it now and played the video in GoodPlayer. It worked fine, but it isnt really the solution I'm looking for.

The problem is that FileBrowser needs to download the file locally before transferring to the video rendering application. This process can be time consuming.

For example, i tried a relatively small 173mb AVI file. This took 1min 30secs at a rate of 1.5mb/s to download to the Ipad using filebrowser. Imagine trying to do the same thing with a 3gb MKV for example. That would take about 30mins.

It's not like my network is slow as I'm on 802.11n 5ghz, so i think this speed limitation is related to either the ipad hardware or filebrowser itself. (copying data from NAS to MBP is a lot faster)

What I was hoping for was an app that would allow me to stream videos wirelessly from my NAS, thus negating the need to download/copy over the file first. By the looks of it though, I don't actually think this app exists 🙁
 
Chic0 said:
Just re-read your first post again. Didn't realise you could do 'open in' with Filebrowser.

Just tried it now and played the video in GoodPlayer. It worked fine, but it isnt really the solution I'm looking for.

The problem is that FileBrowser needs to download the file locally before transferring to the video rendering application. This process can be time consuming.

For example, i tried a relatively small 173mb AVI file. This took 1min 30secs at a rate of 1.5mb/s to download to the Ipad using filebrowser. Imagine trying to do the same thing with a 3gb MKV for example. That would take about 30mins.

It's not like my network is slow as I'm on 802.11n 5ghz, so i think this speed limitation is related to either the ipad hardware or filebrowser itself. (copying data from NAS to MBP is a lot faster)

What I was hoping for was an app that would allow me to stream videos wirelessly from my NAS, thus negating the need to download/copy over the file first. By the looks of it though, I don't actually think this app exists 🙁
Click to expand...

I'll repeat myself...

Stangs55 said:
Airplayer should do the trick for you.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/airplayer/id369713694?mt=8
Click to expand...
 
Chic0 said:
Just re-read your first post again. Didn't realise you could do 'open in' with Filebrowser.

Just tried it now and played the video in GoodPlayer. It worked fine, but it isnt really the solution I'm looking for.

The problem is that FileBrowser needs to download the file locally before transferring to the video rendering application. This process can be time consuming.

For example, i tried a relatively small 173mb AVI file. This took 1min 30secs at a rate of 1.5mb/s to download to the Ipad using filebrowser. Imagine trying to do the same thing with a 3gb MKV for example. That would take about 30mins.

It's not like my network is slow as I'm on 802.11n 5ghz, so i think this speed limitation is related to either the ipad hardware or filebrowser itself. (copying data from NAS to MBP is a lot faster)

What I was hoping for was an app that would allow me to stream videos wirelessly from my NAS, thus negating the need to download/copy over the file first. By the looks of it though, I don't actually think this app exists 🙁
Click to expand...


The problem with filebroweser is that is still uses SMB which is darn slow. Especially combined with wifi it can kill performance. Every request needs to be acked as far as I know and therefor can be slow with 50ms delay on wifi.

I hope they will implement SMBv2 or NFS. Send them an email 🙂 If enough people ask for it they maybe implement it 😀
 
WickedStealthy said:
The problem with filebroweser is that is still uses SMB which is darn slow. Especially combined with wifi it can kill performance. Every request needs to be acked as far as I know and therefor can be slow with 50ms delay on wifi.

I hope they will implement SMBv2 or NFS. Send them an email 🙂 If enough people ask for it they maybe implement it 😀
Click to expand...

I hope iOS 5 will provide more integration regarding filesystem at the OS level between iOS and OSX.
 
Stangs55 said:
I'll repeat myself...
Click to expand...

rhett7660 said:
This looks like the app you are after. Thanks for the suggestion. Have you used it? If it the one I am looking at it has only eight reviews.
Click to expand...


Thanks Stangs55 - Yep that's exactly what I've been looking for! 😀

Only had a bit of time to play about with it, but it seems to work well.

When I opened the app, it found my NAS immediately. It works using DLNA, so I was able to browse all my photos, music and movies on my ipad2.

I've tested it with some fairly large avi files (1-2gb) and also some HD MKV content (4-8gb). They all took a few seconds to buffer before the video was played.

I was incredibly impressed with the even the larger, more complex HD content as they played really smoothly with no stuttering.

The only thing is if you do purchase this app, make sure you go to Settings and disable the 'skip frame' option. It's seems to enable this option by default for some strange reason 🙄
 
Glad it helped.

I've got it on my iPad, but have moved away from it in favor or Airvideo with the client running on my windows home server--that way, I can access my videos remotely over 3G. But for just in-home streaming, Airvideo does a great job.
 
I know you mentioned you had problems with Buzz Player HD but that is what I use and it works perfectly for me. Browsing my NAS is quick and painless and it streams perfectly. Did you manually add the SMB share for your NAS or did you let it discover the uPNP server?
 
Is there an app that can stream video files located on an external hard drive that is attached to an Airport Extreme?
 
oldhouse said:
I am looking for this same thing. Any hint please?
Click to expand...

Please answer these questions so that I can provide you with some expert's recommendations.

1. Over what protocol do you want to access them? UPnP? SMB? FTP? HTTP?
2. Are you ready to jailbreak? (Not a must in this case - but very useful)
3. What format are your videos in?
 
Menneisyys2 said:
Please answer these questions so that I can provide you with some expert's recommendations.

1. Over what protocol do you want to access them? UPnP? SMB? FTP? HTTP?
2. Are you ready to jailbreak? (Not a must in this case - but very useful)
3. What format are your videos in?
Click to expand...

1) I don't know what protocol is supported by USB port on airport extreme.
2) XBMC should work fine, but I would like to know if there is a solution for non-jailbroken devices
3) simple avi xvid+ac3
 
oldhouse said:
1) I don't know what protocol is supported by USB port on airport extreme.
Click to expand...

If it's an Airport, then, you'll need to use SMB. (UPnP is also theoretically possible but requires a lot of hacking - see for example https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3157398?start=0&tstart=0 and http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=40999 .)

oldhouse said:
2) XBMC should work fine, but I would like to know if there is a solution for non-jailbroken devices
Click to expand...

There is but in no way as efficient / easy as XBMC, "thanks" to Apple's absolutely silly restrictions and Dolby's being awfully greedy. As you plan to play back XVID + AC3 over SMB, it's VERY hard to recommend anything to you with both SMB and AC3 support. Neither AVPlayerHD nor CineXPlayer, the two players currently supporting AC3, support SMB. That is, you

1, either hack the router to support UPnP (which is already supported by CineXPlayer) so that you don't need to use SMB OR

2, jailbreak and use XBMC OR

3, convert all your original videos, preferably to MP4 + AAC.

oldhouse said:
3) simple avi xvid+ac3
Click to expand...

These are very problematic, particularly audio-wise, see above.
 
Menneisyys2 said:
If it's an Airport, then, you'll need to use SMB. (UPnP is also theoretically possible but requires a lot of hacking - see for example https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3157398?start=0&tstart=0 and http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=40999 .)



There is but in no way as efficient / easy as XBMC, "thanks" to Apple's absolutely silly restrictions and Dolby's being awfully greedy. As you plan to play back XVID + AC3 over SMB, it's VERY hard to recommend anything to you with both SMB and AC3 support. Neither AVPlayerHD nor CineXPlayer, the two players currently supporting AC3, support SMB. That is, you

1, either hack the router to support UPnP (which is already supported by CineXPlayer) so that you don't need to use SMB OR

2, jailbreak and use XBMC OR

3, convert all your original videos, preferably to MP4 + AAC.



These are very problematic, particularly audio-wise, see above.
Click to expand...

Thanks for clarification 🙂
 
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