How To Stream Media On Android Phone - What You Need

Let's face it, advances in technology affect all of our lives. It can be resisted, it can be opposed, but sooner or later it will seep into everyone's lives to a lesser or greater extent, creating needs that we didn't even know existed until now, that we needed. This is true of almost every aspect of life, but I would like to focus on the impact of modern technology on our media consumption habits.

Many of us can still remember the not too distant past, when we used to borrow our favorite VHS tapes from the shops, and later DVDs, and as they became widely available they became part of our lives and homes.

We copied and burned films and then downloaded them from torrent sites, consuming the content in various ways. A few years ago, we were happy not to have to record films/music we had collected from here and there, but could watch/listen to them directly from our mobile phones, then came dedicated media players, and today we can watch films legally even in our own country, even on our phone screens, via online stores and service providers.

But what I want to talk about now is the possibility of accessing the media we already have (music, film, pictures, whatever) anywhere in our home without actually moving it, just using the home network.

The need to play my films and series anywhere in the house was brought to life when, thanks to Santa Claus - and of course "extensive family cooperation" - I found a tablet under last year's Christmas tree. Bringing the device to life, I immediately started thinking about how I could finally solve the problem of not having to stare at the computer or TV while watching the current "therapy", how nice it would be if I could do this from the kitchen with the fresh smell of my morning coffee.

I have this connect all gadgets to everything thing in me anyway, and since I was sure there was a solution to the problem, I started browsing the internet.

I was looking for a turn-key, simple, low-effort solution, so don't expect any amazing network tricks in the description, but if you are thinking of a similar solution, it might help.

The bottom line. Given the "IT center" of the house is a laptop, which is connected to the world wide web via Wi-Fi (this will be the client or server) on which an external HDD is hanging, on which the movies and the music. My goal was to use Wi-Fi to access the content on the external HDD using a tablet connected to the same network, by simply connecting to the laptop and streaming the content from there by finding a suitable application.

I would also like to mention in brackets that my phone is also connected to the internet via the same router, this will be of importance later, but I would like to point out that a good router, which can serve up to 4-5 devices at a sufficient speed, is not a bad idea.

As my phone is an Android device, I went to the play store, where I looked at millions of apps. I knew that there were many ways to get to my goal (for example, remote management apps like teamviewer, file managers on Wi-Fi that are even good for playing media files), but that's not what I wanted. I was looking for a dedicated streaming app, that could serve my needs, and I also wanted it to be as simple as possible (I didn't want to mess with network settings), free, ad-free and if there was anything else I wanted it to be beautiful.

In the course of my research, I think I have found a real treasure, that meets all the needs I have described above. If you're thinking of a similar streaming solution, don't look far, download the AirStream app (aptly named, isn't it? Sometimes the most obvious things are the best...), which has everything you could ever want. I really don't know what to say about it other than It works perfectly. You install the app on your tablet, the client on your pc and you're done. You can have fun anywhere in the house where the two devices see each other over the same Wi-Fi network. You can browse your computer's file system, create playlists, organize your stuff under a fixed menu item, and even set up your cloud storage, so if your internet speed is fast enough, you can even stream from your dropbox/gdrive/onedrive account. Of course, it's not just movies, but also music, pictures and everything else, if the tablet knows the format, we can play anything on it.

It's free, no ads, no pop-ups and beautiful. Really perfect, take it, I recommend it.

If you ask me about the direction of development, the only thing I can really think of is to be able to turn off the laptop after a fun time. Because what is it like to lie comfortably in bed at night, watch your favorite movie or episode of your favorite series and then shoot the tablet, but the computer keeps blinking and the fan keeps "roaring" until it goes to sleep.

But there is no reason to panic, I was looking for a solution to this problem and luckily I found one. Here my list of needs was rather short, which is why it was difficult to find the right application. I wanted nothing more, than a remote application that would turn my computer off at the touch of a button. That's it, nothing more.

I didn't want to use it to control a keyboard remotely. I didn't want it to take control of the mouse, I didn't want it to control a media player, and I didn't want it to give a power point presentation. Obviously, these things have their own target audience, but for me, they were all unnecessary, I just wanted to be able to turn the computer off after a movie.

Looking through the range of products in the app store, I had to admit pretty quickly, that this was going to be a harder ride, than I thought. There are all sorts of wonder remote apps, but for my needs, I could count on one hand how many more or less met my needs. What would have been good was either ugly (I don't understand why it's so hard to draw a shut down button in the middle of the display...) or it was a network configuration problem, as I'm not willing to look up MAC addresses to get the trick to work, and I didn't want to hear about SSH. Slowly, I narrowed down the list until I finally found one, called Remote PC Lock.

I'm not claiming, that the interface is beautiful, but the fact is that it works by itself once the client is installed. It does nothing more than lock, reboot, sleep or shut down the laptop with a single touch. That's it and nothing more, it's just what I needed.

I also mentioned the phone issue at the beginning of this article, and I'll refer back to it here, because this remote app has no tablet counterpart (at least not in my case), so it has to be installed on the phone, which is also on the same Wi-Fi network as the others. Once this is done there is really no need for any tricks, after an email address registration, the remote control works without any settings.

So, as you can see from the above, the Android platform has reached a level of maturity, that even a complete novice user can do things, that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. Of course, experts were able to tinker with the network to make it work, but nowadays, even simple users with some IT affinity and interest can do it. I think, that is fantastic and I look forward to seeing what the future brings. Some people might think, that this is scary, but I hope there are still ideas where these came from. We'll see, but in the meantime, in the future, feel free to put your tablet next to your breakfast toast if you have nothing better to do. It will work!