I'm looking for app recommendations.
Ever since I began using devices to stream internet video content to my TV, I've been looking for this.
I want an app that will run on AFTV (I'm rooted and can sideload etc) in which I can easily subscribe to a bunch of video netcasts, and then have a playlist with all of them in chronological order when I want to sit down and watch them, preferably streamed. The key requirement here that is eluding me is the playlist of episodes from all of my subscriptions.
I used BeyondPod for audio netcasts on my phone. I've used it on my Nexus also, but it was slow and clunky on the AFTV and difficult to control with the AFTV Remote or with a keyboard+touchpad.
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Does anyone know of an app that will play media from a network share? Ive tried Diceplayer and it doesnt seem to support mkvs... If I can find an app that will stream media off my local shares, this will finally be my "one box to rule them all" as it supports all the services Im interested in, I just want to be able to stream my local media. I DONT want to use Plex or XBMC.. I have a Plex server running and it runs great however I have a catch all folder where downloaded stuff goes before I move it into whatever directory its going to live in and thats the content I want to be able to play.
Anyone got any suggestions?
MadFlava said:
Does anyone know of an app that will play media from a network share? Ive tried Diceplayer and it doesnt seem to support mkvs... If I can find an app that will stream media off my local shares, this will finally be my "one box to rule them all" as it supports all the services Im interested in, I just want to be able to stream my local media. I DONT want to use Plex or XBMC.. I have a Plex server running and it runs great however I have a catch all folder where downloaded stuff goes before I move it into whatever directory its going to live in and thats the content I want to be able to play.
Anyone got any suggestions?
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Try archos media player. I haven't tried it yet but it supports SMB. If you come across anything better, let me know
Well, its not an all in one solution, but...
Install VLC for Android and ES file explorer.
In ES file explorer when you try and open an MKV it will ask what app you want to use. tell it VLC and you are in.
The bad news is that the beta of VLC does not appear to support any controls on the Fire remote. It will take
"mouse" command from the cheap MCE remote that people are using as an InfraRed receiver.
Is there a reason XBMC is out? It can be setup to just show your movies and shows without doing any scraping or anything other then just letting you get to your network shares and play it.
I haven't had the greatest luck with XBMC. Ive set it up on numerous devices and its probably that I just end up getting frustrated with it. I ran it naively back in my original Xbox but now I just cant seem to get a handle on seeing it up to my liking. Plex has been great but I don't think my server has enough Wheaties to handle maybe more than 2 streams which is why I've been looking for something to just stream content across the network.
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You should try Vimu Player. You won't even have to sideload it is in the fire tv store.
I haven't tried it on the fire tv but I used to use it a lot on my Logitech Revue Google Tv. It doesn't have all the features of xbmc or plex but it did a great job streaming video from my NAS.
skinnydev said:
You should try Vimu Player. You won't even have to sideload it is in the fire tv store.
I haven't tried it on the fire tv but I used to use it a lot on my Logitech Revue Google Tv. It doesn't have all the features of xbmc or plex but it did a great job streaming video from my NAS.
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Ill give it a shot. I have Plex set up and it works great for me. But I have kids and they want to stream stuff too and Im concerned that my media server isnt going to have the Wheaties to stream that much stuff so the option of being able to play directly from the share is what Im after. My Plex server is an Athlon Phenom II X3 with 16GB of RAM.. really doesnt do anything but run Plex, SabNZB and PlayOn..
Thanks for the heads up!
I use MX Player and Skifta on my android devices to access my DLNA server. So you can give MX Player a try it handles mkvs perfectly fine.
Vimu looks like it has a lot of potential but sadly most of my MKV files dont have sound and I cant really find any settings to change for that. Im going to give MX Player a shot now.. I dont know if thats DLNA only but if it is, thats not what Im looking for. I just want to be able to stream without transcoding on the server side.
MX Player isn't DLNA only it can handle other network streams just fine as long as you know what they are.
DLNA is just happens to be how I push my media files around the house to my devices.
Yea.. I looked at it and couldnt find a way to browse to shares... Im using a Mede8r for playing from network shares right now.. Im so close to being able to ditch everything except the FireTV.. if I could find a good network player that just plays, I could get rid of all my other boxes. I really want the "one box to rule them all" thing......
Try using es file explorer to browse to the share and ND for playback?
Montisaquadeis said:
Try using es file explorer to browse to the share and ND for playback?
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I had issues with ES working with the Amazon remote. Are you using an external keyboard/mouse to control it?
Personally I do not have a Fire TV. Just trying to help out is all.
A keyboard and mouse should work fine. Even an air mouse should be ok as well if you want to go that route.
I'm really surprised that Qloud Media doesn't get more attention. You install it as a server on either Windows or Mac, point it at your media and that's it.
Run the client on Android, iOS or Windows devices, plug in the server PIN and you're off. Done and done.
The video is transcoded on the fly, so streaming over the internet results in a lower-quality image at times, but it's certainly watchable.
The GUI isn't fancy, but quite functional. The server end has almost no bells and whistles. You could think of it as Plex-ultra-lite, so there's no overhead processing going on. The server exists only to serve media and that's all. No indexing of your collection, no downloading cover images, etc. It just streams media from whatever source you choose and I haven't had any problems streaming anything in my collection, even .mkv files encoded with AC3 audio that the Chromecast won't touch.
I just loaded the client up to my new FTV last night and again, it works perfectly.
The only minor drawback is that the aspect ratio is a bit weird when viewed on the FTV. It's not perfectly 16:9 but more like 15:9, so the image is a bit squished in from the sides. You don't really notice it after a few minutes though.
Im surprised it's 6 months later and there is still no easy way of playin network shared files, say from a NAS device with a media server, on a Fire TV without having to sideload an app. If I'm wrong please correct me. I did try ViMu but it couldn't play any of my files (mostly MP4s) - everyone said it was unable to play. Currently I use an XBox 360 to browse/watch videos, which I have fairly organized into folders. Why is this so difficult? My Sony TV has a player but it doesn't support folders so its hundreds of videos just in alphabetical order by filename which isn't ideal- plus you can only read the first few characters of the file name without looking at a detailed view so no way to tell what specific file you're looking at if they all start with the same word.
Yes I tried XMBC but it's way overkill, I don't need or want custom artwork per file, it crashes, and it's also not something I can put in the regular fite tv menu. Also XMBC doesn't play 720p content full screen for some reason.
Has anyone had better luck?
Edit ---------------------------
Well after some more trial and error I ended up using Llama to auto start XBMC in place of some other random app so I basically have XMBC on my main Fire TV screen. I also deleted all XBMC data and didn't run any file scrapers this time, and only access files via the Windows Network Share, so it is a much cleaner looking interface like I wanted. Finally the screen size issue was actually the entire Fire TV screen size which I had to enlarge in the Fire TV Display settings. Even maxed out it doesn't 100% fill the screen but it's much closer, I can live with it. Although I didn't bring it up I was also having an issue with the time display I was blaming on XMBC but was again the Fire TV itself was set to Pacific time- you'd think Amazon would have set the timezone right.
Anyway I feel it's much than it was earlier- still occasional crashes on XBMC but not too bad. Just wish I didn't was a few dollars downloading paid apps that didn't work as I thought they were supposed to.
If XBMC is crashing, consider trying SPMC (fork of XBMC). Its available in the Amazon app store (but for the Stick it must be side loaded).
I'm using it on my FTV Stick, and its been solid. No crashes or hangs.
Does anyone know why my MX Player stop playing on my one box it's saying cannot play link it's on my firestick on TV
back ground... For years I have used the native file play back capibilities of my LG BD390 and LG BD570 bluray players to connect to windows file shares, and play back video files (AVI, Mp4, MKV, M2TS and others). Basically, I setup a shared folder on my PC, put my media files in it, and used the menu on the BD's to connect to the share and play the file. No DLNA, no transcoding on the fly, etc.
I want to add that ability, along with netflix and amazon instant video, in two other rooms, but all the bluray players I can buy locally use DLNA now. There are some I can get mail order, but they are more expensive too.
If it matters, most of my MKV's were made using BD-Rebuilder or VideoReDo TVSuite. Some do have DTS, others DD5.1. The M2TS files were made using my Sony HDR-SR11 HiDef camcorder and my Hauppauge HD PVR (1212).
Output would be HDMI to a TV. If it works well enough, I'd get one for the basement too (where I'd hook it to a receiver via optical audio).
I know the Fire TV can be setup to do Amazon Instant and Netflix. But can it be setup to replace the BD's (minus bluray/dvd playback of course). To play those files without having to transcode, or use a DLNA server too? Could I possibly use Rhapsody too?
KidJoe said:
back ground... For years I have used the native file play back capibilities of my LG BD390 and LG BD570 bluray players to connect to windows file shares, and play back video files (AVI, Mp4, MKV, M2TS and others). Basically, I setup a shared folder on my PC, put my media files in it, and used the menu on the BD's to connect to the share and play the file. No DLNA, no transcoding on the fly, etc.
I want to add that ability, along with netflix and amazon instant video, in two other rooms, but all the bluray players I can buy locally use DLNA now. There are some I can get mail order, but they are more expensive too.
If it matters, most of my MKV's were made using BD-Rebuilder or VideoReDo TVSuite. Some do have DTS, others DD5.1. The M2TS files were made using my Sony HDR-SR11 HiDef camcorder and my Hauppauge HD PVR (1212).
Output would be HDMI to a TV. If it works well enough, I'd get one for the basement too (where I'd hook it to a receiver via optical audio).
I know the Fire TV can be setup to do Amazon Instant and Netflix. But can it be setup to replace the BD's (minus bluray/dvd playback of course). To play those files without having to transcode, or use a DLNA server too? Could I possibly use Rhapsody too?
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The Fire TV currently does not natively support playing videos of any sort from a shared PC folder. I am not aware of any "official" apps that do it either. By "official" I mean apps you can download from the Amazon appstore which display traditionally in the Fire TV "app" section. That said, there is XBMC (xbmc.org). XBMC runs beautifully on the Fire TV. You have to sideload the app, which is a simple process and does not involve rooting. The biggest disadvantage to XBMC over an "official" app or native solution is how you have to launch XBMC on the Fire TV. Instead of just going to the "Apps" section on the home screen, you have to dig down into a few menus. Specifically, you have to (from the homescreen) navigate to Settings > Applications > XBMC > Launch. It's a minor inconvenience, but it's worth mentioning. There are ways to make launching XBMC easier, but they are a bit of a hack involving other sideloaded android apps.
With XBMC you can do everything your BD players could do. HDMI and Optical audio are available on the Fire TV. Multiple options for getting to your media over the network are available. No transcoding or DLNA necessary. MKV's play fine. DTS and DD5.1 get passed through correctly. I've never tried M2TS files myself, but I would be surprised if XBMC couldn't play them. If you provide me a link to a M2TS file, I'd be happy to try it out for you. There is no official Rhapsody app. You can sideload the Rhapsody app for Android, but you will have to use a mouse & keyboard plugged into the Fire TV to use it. I would expect Rhapsody will make a Fire TV app eventually since they already have a Kindle Fire app.
@fireTVnews.com thank you for the reply. Sorry I got a little side tracked.
it sounds very tempting
Samba player
Another apps are (sideloading only):
Dice Player - very nice, but has no good support of FireTV remote.
File Manager HD + MX Player - 2 apps, that's only minus.
Hello,
I dont know anything about Fire TV, but I am very interested in it!
Can I stream mkv files (x264 codec) and Blu-rays from my NAS to Fire TV?
Have you looked into Plex? Go to plex.tv for more info.
Damn straight YEAH...If you plan to get the AFTV chances are you will install XBMC/Kodi - all you have to do is use Samba (or whatever your share is) and add your NAS disks to your video sources...done.
If you don't want/need XBMC (are you kidding me? ) then use BSPlayer to play videos from the mapped drives...or use ESFile Explorer to map the drive then open the video with...any player you choose.
You have plenty of options, I would not consider Plex if you don't need it for streaming/transcoding. Why would I run a PC if I have a small/quiet Media Center.
My normal browsing experience frequently involves clicking media links that trigger third-party players. In particular, I click links for video files or audio files that play in VLC primarily. How do I integrate VLC into the Silk or Firefox browsing experience on the Fire TV? For example, I want VLC to be triggered as a player whenever I click a link in the Firefox or Silk Fire TV browser that ends in .m3u8.
Thanks in advance for the help. I'm quite surprised that I've hit a brick wall on this; I would have thought it would have been a standard part of the browser setup on the Fire TV, now that Firefox and Silk are both available for it. But apparently it is not.
By the way, I manually installed VLC by itself on the Fire TV and it works O.K. with some exceptions, though I still need to figure out how to integrate it with one or both of my Fire TV browsers. There are a few live video streams which VLC handles fine on my computer but where it has some problems when playing on a Fire TV (specifically, some live video streams use a segmented system, where the stream is not continuous but consists of small video files of ten or fifteen seconds, followed by another file of the same length, followed by another file of the same length, etc. etc. This segmented steaming system works fine in VLC on my computers but when these streams play back in VLC on the Fire TV, you can see the breaks/interruptions as each segment finishes playing and VLC loads up the next one). So I guess I'm also in the market for another video streaming player for my Fire TV, in addition to the VLC player, specifically a video player that can better handle segmented streaming in the Fire TV environment. Though I guess that second question may belong in a separate thread perhaps. (By the way, I just discovered that the VLC player does NOT have this problem on my regular plain vanilla LG Tribute HD phone (Android version 6.0.1) with live segmented streams. The VLC player's problem with live segmented streams seems to be confined to the Fire TV. Problem on the Fire TV or with VLC?)
Disclaimer: I am not interested in any cracked apps. I am open to app clones from reputable developers that remove adverts on websites like XDA Developers.
I have moved away from Spotify premium on my Android phone, in favour of Spotify Lite (no ads), YouTube Vanced, and YouTube Vanced Music. Using Set Orientation for Spotify Lite on my Shield TV works great, but most of the time you have to guess what is actually selected on screen as this does not highlight, and you cannot cast from Spotify Lite on another device. If you already have it running on Android TV and you open it on your phone (with the same account) and select something the UI will not respond on the phone but it will start playing on the TV. This could work but the drawback with this is that if you leave it running and you are not at home trying to use Spotify Lite your songs will only be playing at home, not to mention if you want to play music on your phone and someone else wants to use the Shield.
There are ads when casting from YouTube Music Vanced to the Shield - on the Shield.
Google Home does not yet allow adding the Shield TV to a speaker group
Smart YouTube TV works great on Android TV, there are no ads but if you try to have audio only by going to your homescreen it pauses playback.
Is there some way to do this? I am happy to root the Shield if necessary.
Have you tried Newpipe? No ads and has background player. You can get it from fdroid or official site https://newpipe.schabi.org/
MuadDib6 said:
Have you tried Newpipe? No ads and has background player. You can get it from fdroid or official site https://newpipe.schabi.org/
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Yes, I have Newpipe and Smart YouTube TV installed but when I cast from my phone it the music or music and video play using Chromecast and I still experience ads.
I also found with Newpipe that you cannot login so I cannot access my saved playlists or recommendations etc.
Have you had a different experience?
runswithascript said:
Yes, I have Newpipe and Smart YouTube TV installed but when I cast from my phone it the music or music and video play using Chromecast and I still experience ads.
I also found with Newpipe that you cannot login so I cannot access my saved playlists or recommendations etc.
Have you had a different experience?
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Didn't know that for login as I'm not using google account. I bookmark playlists directly in Newpipe.
As for ads when casting that has to do with Chromecast. Chromecast is getting stream directly from router, not your phone. I believe you will have to block ads either directly on Shield with an ad blocker or on network level by using ad-blocking dns or pi-hole.