How To Stream To WP 8.1 and 10.

STREAM STREAM STREAM !

Today we will learn how to stream to your Windows Phone 8.1 or 10. And to do this we require following things :

1) A SMB and UPnP enabled router like TP-LINK Archer C20 .

2) Sandisk Cruser Blade32 GB PenDrive (https://www.sandisk.in/home/usb-flash/cruzer-blade).

3) Some free software's :

   a) mFTP2 (free ftp client)

   b) Smart Player (video streamer).

   c) OneVideo (video streamer).

4) Nokia Lumia 1320.

Why ? Archer C20 !

Founded in 1996, TP-Link is a global provider of reliable networking devices and accessories, involved in all aspects of everyday life. The company is consistently ranked by analyst firm IDC as the No. 1 provider of WLAN and broadband CPE devices*, supplying distribution to more than 120 countries and serving hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

As a known friend of mine got 1 from his uncle in pune, as they got an TP-LINK P5 In 12K as they needed 2 USB ports 1 for NAS drive and other for wireless printing  along with GigaByte Ethernet Ports. To know more about C20 and specs visit : http://www.tp-link.com/lb/products/details/cat-9_Archer-C20.html .

How ?

1) Plug in the pen drive with media (photos , music and videos) in it.

2) Login to your router's web base interface by going to 192.168.0.1.

3) Go to USB Settings.

4) And  user accounts.

5) create user and grant it access.

7) Then in storage sharing enable it.

8)  Go to  FTP server and add folder's to it, Then enable it.

9) In Media Server give your server a name and enable it.

10) save all your settings.

You are done just software part remaining.

Why? mFTP2 !

mFTP2 is the completely new developed successor of mFTP. We learned from the mistakes we did in the earlier version and started from the scratch to create a new, unique way to interact with your FTP server. mFTP2 offers you a full FTP client, with all the familiar features and allows the exchange of data from your desktop and Tablet PC with your FTP server. Therefore the download and upload of files is as well possible as creating, renaming, and moving folders. You can also modify their access permissions. Because of the modern design and intuitive operation, the use of mFTP2 is easy and pleasant.

( It is available for both pc and mobile devices ).

How ?

1)  Go to mFTP2 and click on + symbol.

2) Fill in the NAME, ADDRESS, USERNAME & PASSWORD fields and leave the POER AND ENCRYPTION MODE field as default.

3) In address field fill in ip address available n FTP Server section of your router.

4) Save the settings and you are done.

Why? Smart Player !

Smart Player is a Windows mobile UPnP (DLNA) Control Point. It browses and plays easily your music, images and videos on your phone or your DLNA devices on your network from all your UPnP/DLNA enabled media servers (XBMC, Windows Media Player, Sonos, XBox360, DLNA TVs, ...) or from your preferred online storage solution. (Dropbox, Youtube, SkyDrive, Google Drive or SoundCloud)

How ?

1) open Smart Player and go to sources.

2) Click on your media server.

Now you are ready to play your video's , audios and view your pics from your dlna server.

Ps: streaming of videos takes anywhere between 15 to 30 seconds as it uses system decoder and there is no way to change it to custom decoder.

Why? One Video !

OneVideo is unified media player for Windows Phone. It's perfect solution for playing all media files from various source types.

How ?

1) Open the app.
2) Go to Connect To Servers and select your media server.
3) in settings select custom decoder. (and videos stream without delay).

and enjoy streaming of  your music and video's on your phone. As it dose not stream images, so we have to use Smart Player for images.

Nokia 1320 was the phone he had with him for use so we were able to doe the above steps at his home as he is a novice with streaming.

Hope you liked it .. follow these and your good to go..

I Dream Of DLNA

Today we are not reviewing any phone or device or any software But we will speak about something of your interest. You got it right it is STREAMING  and I chetan Saxena  welcome you to be a part of my this journey and how I achieved it

what is DLNA ?

Digital home entertainment has come a long way in a fairly short time, and it's now easy to stream music, video and other media around the house without any hassle.

Technologies such as DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) are a big part of that'

The Digital Living Network Alliance is a non-profit trade organisation, and it was started by Sony way back in 2003. The DLNA defines standards that enable devices to share stuff - photos, video, music - with each other, and it has more than 200 members responsible for more than 9,000 different DLNA devices.

DLNA is designed to act as a bridge between your various bits of kit, so you can watch a film from your PC on your big-screen TV, play an MP3 from your smartphone on your stereo, or send shots from the family photo album to your wireless printer via your tablet. Think of it as a kind of home cloud: it shouldn't matter where your media is or what device you're currently holding; with DLNA, whatever you want should come to wherever you are and whatever you're using.

As you might expect, DLNA hardware is designed to work on a home network. It doesn't matter whether that network is wired or wireless, although with Wi-Fi you'll need to ensure that your network has sufficient bandwidth for what you want to do. We'd recommend 802.11n Wi-Fi for serious home sharing.

DLNA-compatible devices use UPnP to communicate, and there are three classes of DLNA devices: Home Network Devices, Mobile Handheld Devices and Home Infrastructure Devices. The first category encompasses media servers, AV receivers, TVs, consoles and tablets; the second category includes smartphones and media tablets; and the third category covers routers and hubs.

Is your device DLNA certified?

DLNA Certified devices have been tested to ensure that they'll play nicely with other DLNA devices. Non-certified devices can be made DLNA compatible with software, so for example PCs can be DLNA servers if they're running version 11 or later of Windows Media Player.

To know more visit : https://www.dlna.org/

Or to check if your device is DLNA certified visit : https://spirespark.com/dlna/products/

To see DLNA guidelines and download the visit : https://spirespark.com/dlna/guidelines/

As they tell you a lot about DLNA architecture in detail. 

MY NAS Drive DLNA certification

What is NAS?

Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. NAS is specialized for serving files either by its hardware, software, or configuration. It is often manufactured as a computer appliance – a purpose-built specialized computer.

You all know about Ethernet and lan wan man and routers and gateways. So we will not speak about it.

Home network (HAN)

A home network or home area network (HAN) is a type of local area network with the purpose to facilitate communication among digital devices present inside or within the close vicinity of a home.

Or

A home network or home area network is a type of computer network that facilitates communication among devices within the close vicinity of a home. Devices capable of participating in this network, for example, smart devices such as network printers and handheld mobile computers, often gain enhanced emergent capabilities through their ability to interact. These additional capabilities can be used to increase the quality of life inside the home in a variety of ways, such as automation of repetitious tasks, increased personal productivity, enhanced home security, and easier access to entertainment.

An example of a simple home network (c) wikipedia.org

What do we require to set them up !

1) NAS drive  any TB and any manufacture .

I Choose WD 1 TB

I choose WD for price factor and considering there popularity in the market . I got mine from  a local Reliance Digital Store  shelf @ Vashi for 4K with 3 yrs warranty.

Only drawback unlike new WD disks has no  USB Expansion port at back. see the pic below :

2) Router  (N or AC ) Series pictured below (DGN2200v4  N300) & (Archer C20i AC 750)

I chose Archer C20i again as it has 3 internal antennae of  2 Db X 2 and 5 Db X 1 and is an AC architecture and my laptop and phone and tabs are AC compliant and I got it for 1950 IN only again from tanish WiFi Technologies at Dream Mall @ Bhandup.

 

3) Smart TV Box : I use the one from iREVO as it is more stable and gives me live broadcast an streams my fav shows over the cloud via neat TV interface and is DLNA compliant  and runs on android 4.4.2 (in.irevomm.com). See the pics below of two models  with and without antenna choose what fits your budget.

They feature media streaming options with media servers built in to them like xbmc , kodi & Ehome media centre.

4) Software's 
    a) WD MY Cloud software for windows 10 downlodable from :-
         http://setup.wd2go.com/?mod=download&device=mc.
    b) Mediahouse UPnP/DLNA  (android) from play store.
    c) ESexplorer (android) from play store.

I used  WD MY Cloud software for windows 10 for uploading contents from my pc like audio , video and images to my NAS drive.  Mediahouse UPnP/DLNA  as it can scan most of NAS drive on my home network  and stream from them seamlessly and comes in free and paid versions. ESexplorer for FTP purposes and copying contents for offline viewing or for installing .APK files on the box.

How do we connect to them?

1) Connect your NAS drive to your modem with lan cable as shone below :

And now power up modem .  And you will see a lan (a monitor symbol) light glow on your modem. and then run setup from the WD cd to setup your NAS Drive and configure it.  On Web control panel  enable Media Streaming server which could be  DLNA or Twonky media. In my case it was Twonky media. How to enable? see the pic below :

Once you are done then use WD MY Cloud software to upload your fav media in HD format like Videos or Movies, Music or Images, and .APK file for installation.

On your smart TV box install  Mediahouse UPnP/DLNA  for streaming from DLNA NAS (if your box candetect your NAS drive on your network) and ESexplorer  to add FTP Capabilities to your box and to copy contents to box for offline viewing and to use it as an file explorer it your box does not have one.

Configure Mediahouse UPnP/DLNA  as shone in below pics and you are done :

Or

And then wait for your media to appear and then select browse as in pic below :

And you can see your contents ready to be played on your TV.

                         Playing one of my favourite song  on my Videocon TV With the app.

For EsExplorer go to lan tab and select scan and select your NAS drive and you are Good To Go.

EsExplorer running  on my Videocon full HD TV.

A very useful tool which I always use on my tablets phones and now on my media box has emerged as a lifesaver for my home network. KUDOS ES.

And We are done but if you have Ehome Media Centre built in like in my case then: 

1)  Make Shure your router supports UPnP and SMB and are enabled on your router or streaming wont work as drive wont visible at all.

2) Run ehome app and as shone in above image select media player.

3) Then wait for it show your drive as it takes 15 to 20 seconds and then click on your drive and happily browse our contents and play them on your TV.

 How to use DLNA via windows PC?

1.       Connect both your iRevo device and your Windows PC to the same wi-fi network.

2.       Go to My Computer ? CLICK ON homegroup ? Create a homegroup ? Click on Ok.

3.       Go to Control panel ? Network and Internet ? Homegroup ? Advanced sharing settings ?        All Networks ? Turn off password protected sharing.

4.       ADD files to your homegroup folders (namely images , pictures ,videos etc)

5.       On your iREVO smart pc go to ? Local media (bottom bar ) ? Click on DLNA ?                  Coose your homegroup server ? you can now view the files.

To create a streaming server via your router :

visit :

1)  http://www.tp-link.com/us/faq-340.html

2)  http://www.tp-link.com/us/faq-682.html

or your router manufacturers page but see to it that your at least  have  a USB 2.0 or 3.0 or both like in high end routers from tp-link or Dlink Etc...

I used a 16Gb Sandisk connected to my modem and using the links below to configure my router was able to stream but guess what Ehome media centre showed my shares and was able to stream them without any error or buffering.

Will be back again with some other topic or reviews of some new device or software. Till that time

            H  A  P  P  Y    S  T  R  E  A  M  I  N  G .