Remote Potato & Media Center Android App (It Works! - Stream Recorded TV)

[Blk02]

I just got Remote Potato working on my Windows 7 Media Center HTPC and it is great!!! I can schedule recordings, browse the guide, delete recordings, stream music, stream recordings, and look at pictures anywhere I can find a internet browser. I also downloaded Remote Media Center app for my Android phone. This app uses Remote Potato and it allows you to do the same things as the browser version except on your phone using an app interface. I had issues with the latest stable release of Remote Potato getting video and audio to sync correctly when streaming over 3G to my phone. I upgraded Remote Potato to the latest Tech Preview and all the sync issues seem to be fixed. The streaming actually works on 3G so you dont even need 4G or WiFi. The only thing you have to pay money for is the VPlayer Android app so you can stream recordings to your phone. VPlayer has a free trial so you can try it out but the trial does not last very long. VPlayer is the only player that will allow this type of streaming so there is only one choice right now. I set the buffer in VPlayer to 1MB and it seems to work pretty well. I can get about 15 minutes of streaming video on normal quality using 3G (3 signal bars on Sprint EVO) before it starts to buffer again. One of the limitations is that you cannot currently fastforward or skip when streaming content to your phone, so you will be watching commercials. Remote Potato and Media Center app survive off donations, so if you enjoy the software please donate.

Lastly, transcoding and streaming content on the fly is very CPU intensive work especially when trying to convert and stream HD content. I have a Quadcore 8200 2.33Ghz and it stayed at about 40% utilization while transcoding and streaming HD content. Sometimes utilization spiked to 60%. This setup will be hard on lesser Dualcore machines. If you are having issues open the task manager and see if your CPU might be the bottleneck.

If you have any questions or need help setting up everything just let me know below. This is seriously a sweet setup!!! The guide below is very comprehensive and it should make things pretty easy to setup.

Important Links:

Remote Potato Setup Walk Through
http://deanhatescoffee.com/posts/remote-control-windows-media-center-with-remote-potato

DynDNS
http://www.dyndns.com/

FatAttitude Forums (Remote Potato)
http://remotepotatoforums.fatattitude.com/

 

[valve1138]

Neat!

 

[Blk02]

I thought I would bump this since I have seen some threads pop up about streaming to Android devices

 

[xFROSTx]

I agree, Remote Potato has become a necessity for my HTPC these days. Someone made a similar thread a couple months ago, which convinced me to finally give it a whirl, and I have been plesantly suprised. I don't use it much to stream TV, but the few times I have used it, I have had no complaints. On the other hand, being able to schedule TV recordings while on the go has been a lifesaver!