OffWorld
Senior Member
- Oct 5, 2010
- 460
- 67
I have a media center computer with all my videos and music ripped onto it. It is a centralized server I can access over my LAN/Wi-Fi from every computer in the house. I've played videos stored on the media center over wi-fi on my laptop before, I thought it would be cool to do it with my Android Tablet too. And I CAN! Here's how:
You don't need any special software for this on your desktop computer. I've tested this with Windows 7 Pro and Linux Mint 9. Should work with other versions of Windows and any Linux distro with Samba file sharing. It should work with a Mac too, I just haven't tried setting that up yet.
First, you have to go to your desktop/media center computer(s) and find out what their IP addresses are. If you have DHCP on your router, though, these can change but I've found the computers in my house seem to generally get assigned the same IP again and again. If you assign static IPs to your computers with your router you won't have to worry about that. Anyway, once you have the IP address(es) written down you need to set up the shared folders.
On Windows and Linux this is actually pretty easy - you right+click on the folder you want to share, go to the "sharing" tab, enable sharing it, give it a network name if you need to, and set the permissions to access the folder. I have had zero luck getting Android to actually authenticate for password access to folders on either Windows or Linux, so I had to make sure I set it so the folder didn't require a password to access. I'd also recommend NOT allowing users to change or delete files in the shared folder(s). It should be ok to leave them without password protection - these aren't critical system folders, you're granting "read only" access, and if your LAN and Wi-Fi are properly secured nobody you don't want to will be accessing them anyway.
So I shared the "Videos" and "Music" folders on my desktop computers and verified each of them and all the other computers on my home network can access those shared folders. Yay! Now, on to Android--->
If you don't already have it, download "ES File Explorer" and launch it. Press the "Menu" button and select "Show Tabs." You'll see three tabs across the top:
1. Tablet Icon (access /nand and /sdcard)
2. Computer (LAN shares)
3. Network Folder (FTP Server)
Press the 2nd Tab. It should tell you to press Menu>New>Server - so do that.
You'll get a configuration window titled "New/Edit Samba Server"
Enter the IP address of the computer on your LAN you want to access. You can either point it directly into a single shared folder on the computer OR you can just leave it at the IP address and it will show ALL the shared folders on that computer (I prefer the latter method). If you set your folders so they don't require a password all you need to do is click the "Anonymous" checkbox. Enter a name for the computer if you want, otherwise it will just show the IP address (if your network uses DHCP you may want to just leave it at the IP number since it could potentially point to a different computer with different shared folders than the one it is pointing to right now). Click "OK"
You should now see it in the list of LAN shares in the ES File Explorer window. Click on it, and if all is set up correctly, you'll see either a list of the files in the subfolder (if you pointed it directly into one folder) or a list of all the shared folder on that computer!
MP3 files can be played over the network directly in the ES File Explorer. However, on my tablet the screen goes completely black (it's not turned off though) while the music is playing. So you have no controls - it will just start playing whatever MP3 file you clicked, and won't stop until you hit the "Back" button, which takes you back to the LAN Shares file list.
WMV files can also be played over the network - it will launch a video player. You'll probably want to turn the device into landscape mode before you start playing a file - I found that sometimes turning the device after the video had started caused the picture to break (it still kept playing though).
Other audio/video file formats probably won't stream. It will say the file format isn't supported or that it has to download it to the tablet before it can play it (kind of defeats the point). I only tested MP3, WMV, DIVX, and AVI. My tablet WILL play all of those formats if the files are on the device, but it would only stream WMV and MP3 over my network. If you find other file formats that stream let me know!
You don't need any special software for this on your desktop computer. I've tested this with Windows 7 Pro and Linux Mint 9. Should work with other versions of Windows and any Linux distro with Samba file sharing. It should work with a Mac too, I just haven't tried setting that up yet.
First, you have to go to your desktop/media center computer(s) and find out what their IP addresses are. If you have DHCP on your router, though, these can change but I've found the computers in my house seem to generally get assigned the same IP again and again. If you assign static IPs to your computers with your router you won't have to worry about that. Anyway, once you have the IP address(es) written down you need to set up the shared folders.
On Windows and Linux this is actually pretty easy - you right+click on the folder you want to share, go to the "sharing" tab, enable sharing it, give it a network name if you need to, and set the permissions to access the folder. I have had zero luck getting Android to actually authenticate for password access to folders on either Windows or Linux, so I had to make sure I set it so the folder didn't require a password to access. I'd also recommend NOT allowing users to change or delete files in the shared folder(s). It should be ok to leave them without password protection - these aren't critical system folders, you're granting "read only" access, and if your LAN and Wi-Fi are properly secured nobody you don't want to will be accessing them anyway.
So I shared the "Videos" and "Music" folders on my desktop computers and verified each of them and all the other computers on my home network can access those shared folders. Yay! Now, on to Android--->
If you don't already have it, download "ES File Explorer" and launch it. Press the "Menu" button and select "Show Tabs." You'll see three tabs across the top:
1. Tablet Icon (access /nand and /sdcard)
2. Computer (LAN shares)
3. Network Folder (FTP Server)
Press the 2nd Tab. It should tell you to press Menu>New>Server - so do that.
You'll get a configuration window titled "New/Edit Samba Server"
Enter the IP address of the computer on your LAN you want to access. You can either point it directly into a single shared folder on the computer OR you can just leave it at the IP address and it will show ALL the shared folders on that computer (I prefer the latter method). If you set your folders so they don't require a password all you need to do is click the "Anonymous" checkbox. Enter a name for the computer if you want, otherwise it will just show the IP address (if your network uses DHCP you may want to just leave it at the IP number since it could potentially point to a different computer with different shared folders than the one it is pointing to right now). Click "OK"
You should now see it in the list of LAN shares in the ES File Explorer window. Click on it, and if all is set up correctly, you'll see either a list of the files in the subfolder (if you pointed it directly into one folder) or a list of all the shared folder on that computer!
MP3 files can be played over the network directly in the ES File Explorer. However, on my tablet the screen goes completely black (it's not turned off though) while the music is playing. So you have no controls - it will just start playing whatever MP3 file you clicked, and won't stop until you hit the "Back" button, which takes you back to the LAN Shares file list.
WMV files can also be played over the network - it will launch a video player. You'll probably want to turn the device into landscape mode before you start playing a file - I found that sometimes turning the device after the video had started caused the picture to break (it still kept playing though).
Other audio/video file formats probably won't stream. It will say the file format isn't supported or that it has to download it to the tablet before it can play it (kind of defeats the point). I only tested MP3, WMV, DIVX, and AVI. My tablet WILL play all of those formats if the files are on the device, but it would only stream WMV and MP3 over my network. If you find other file formats that stream let me know!
