iPad Mini Movie Watching Direct From LAN...?

[mainstay]

I am looking to play movies of all types directly from a NAS or mac mini and I do NOT want to have to transfer them to the iPad mini nor do I want to re-encode them.

On Android I use ES File Explorer and MX Player or VPlayer for instant and trouble free playback with absolutely no thought involved.... which is nice.

Before I left for the land of Android, I was using VLCStreamer, which worked well for a very select and limited set of files (but was getting unmanageable with large mkv files + the weird on-the-fly transcoding didn't always work).

My Question: how can I get a nice lan browser w/ full video playback on the iPad?

(Also, I'd like to avoid Plex-type arrangments).

Thanks All!

--m

 

[Menneisyys2]

I am looking to play movies of all types directly from a NAS or mac mini and I do NOT want to have to transfer them to the iPad mini nor do I want to re-encode them.

On Android I use ES File Explorer and MX Player or VPlayer for instant and trouble free playback with absolutely no thought involved.... which is nice.

Before I left for the land of Android, I was using VLCStreamer, which worked well for a very select and limited set of files (but was getting unmanageable with large mkv files + the weird on-the-fly transcoding didn't always work).

My Question: how can I get a nice lan browser w/ full video playback on the iPad?

(Also, I'd like to avoid Plex-type arrangments).

Thanks All!

--m

Does your NAS support SMB? If yes, then, give nPlayer a try. See https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1503989/ for more info on SMB; note that the article itself is a bit aged and, consequently, doesn't discuss the quite new nPlayer, as has also been explained in post #7 under the original article.

 

[mainstay]

this is a nice list - thank you!

nPlayer looks like a good option to pull from a few mac mini's (using SMBUP to replace apple's version).

Thank you for the info!

 

[gotluck]

this is a nice list - thank you!

nPlayer looks like a good option to pull from a few mac mini's (using SMBUP to replace apple's version).

Thank you for the info!

Just ordered and iPad air and I'm used to using same combo of es file explorer and MX player. I was planning on buying nplayer, sounds like that's the right move. Only video player with ac3 support I believe?

 

[chriscl]

PlayerXtreme has network support and works quite well.

 

[JTravers]

A combination of FileBrowser and VLC works pretty well, too. FileBrowser has a "Stream to" function which creates a URL that you can paste into VLC to stream the video file "through" FileBrowser. Not sure what magic is happening in the background, but it works.
http://www.stratospherix.com/products/filebrowser/support/fb_guide.php?page=guide&section=streaming

 

[gotluck]

A combination of FileBrowser and VLC works pretty well, too. FileBrowser has a "Stream to" function which creates a URL that you can paste into VLC to stream the video file "through" FileBrowser. Not sure what magic is happening in the background, but it works.
http://www.stratospherix.com/products/filebrowser/support/fb_guide.php?page=guide&section=streaming

VLC should def work, just as a FYI though it is software acceleration, which has battery implications, other players can do it in hardware mode

 

[Menneisyys2]

Just ordered and iPad air and I'm used to using same combo of es file explorer and MX player. I was planning on buying nplayer, sounds like that's the right move. Only video player with ac3 support I believe?

A lot other players also support AC3; for example, the otehrwise excellent AVPlayerHD. However, its networking support is pretty bad and isn't as for example subtitle standards compliant as nPlayer - see https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1652736/

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VLC should def work, just as a FYI though it is software acceleration, which has battery implications, other players can do it in hardware mode

Indeed. VLC, as of now, is NOT recommended, unless you want to play back some non-H.264 video. (But even then it has worse codecs than e.g. nPlayer. See for example my MPEG2 1080i60 decoding test at https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18129656/

All in all, VLC is NOT recommended.