Streaming to an Advent Vega

[Guest jerrysimon]

Hi,

Well I caught the bug and just picked one of these up for a bargain £199.

Intially I saw an AD for a Disgo Tablet 6000 on Play at under £100. I was in the dreaded Maplins and a couple of tablets caught my eye and I tried them. I pretty soon released that the screens on the lower priced ones are not that good in terms of touch sensitivity. I then realised some of the limitations of units without flash.

Anyway for ages I have been looking at those little LCD photo frames, as my wife loves to be able to look at photos. I wanted one with a WiFi connection (again around £100) so that I could stream photos to it and with a tablet, I realised I might get added functionality for a little extra money.

I then came across the Advent Vega and this forum. After reading about the MoDaCo ROM upgrade and seeing that the price of this one had come down, I thought this may provide the solution. I went to PC World to have a look and came out with one plus the docking station. I saw some of the latest stunning Android 3 ones, but at twice the price manage to resist phew...

First impressions of the unit are pretty good in terms of screen and build quality. I run an Android 2.1 phone and love the OS. As this is 2.2 I quickly saw the OS was even better than that on my phone. I love the live wallpapers which I don't have on my phone. However it lacked adroid market place and flash so time to upgrade. About 30mins later and I was running it upgraded with MoDaCo (I had to add flash from the market place after the upgrade ?)

Anyway a BIG thanks to the author for this great upgrade :o

Anyway back to what I wanted the tablet for. I then set about setting it up for streaming and displaying photos. I have a NAS so needed some streaming software. After reading around I downloaded file expert for streaming and Rockplayer for displaying. I would be interested in other experiences and maybe any other recommendations for software to use ?

Finally I thought I would try streaming some HD movie content I have and was a little disappointed to find this was blocky and out of sync. SD content works fine. I have good WiFi connections and my daughter can stream HD content over it on her MAC so I am not sure what it wrong ?

When applying the update I saw there are some extra performance apps in the kitchen version if you subscribe. Should I do this ? (probably should to support the developer anyway) will it help resolve the streaming of HD ?

Anyway overall for under £200 I am pleased as hopefully I can leave the unit running photos in lounge on its docking station and have the added bonus that it can then be picked up for surfing sessions whilse sat on the sofa :mellow:

Again thanks to the author and to the posters here for all the info they have posted which helped me find and start to tailor this nice little product.

Regards

Jerry

Edited May 2, 2011 by jerrysimon

[Guest Maxwell4321]

Glad you are liking your new Vega, give vPlayer a try for displaying your streaming, it can handle more file formats than Rockplayer and has just been optimised for Tegra2 devices - there is a 1 week free trial on the market.

Edited May 2, 2011 by Maxwell4321

[Guest Sanddancer75]

UPnPlay can stream pictures, music & video (I've not tried HD stuff from my NAS though). It might be worth a try.

Someone posted Toshiba's media player which is quite nice looking as supposedly does streaming, but I couldn't get the streaming side of it to work. Here's the thread: http://android.modaco.com/content/forum/33...-it-works-well/

Edited May 2, 2011 by Sanddancer75

[Guest jerrysimon]

Thanks guys for your quick and helpfull responses. Great forum. I will give those ideas a try and report back.

Regards

Jerry

Edited May 2, 2011 by jerrysimon

[Guest MrSnake]

I'm also using upnplay with rockpplayer lite to stream to vega

[Guest jerrysimon]

I'm also using upnplay with rockpplayer lite to stream to vega

Thanks, are you streaming HD ?

Most of my stuff is only 720p as I appreciate 1080p would be asking to much streamed on wifi.

Also I have a lot of DVD home vidoes ripped onto my NAS and it would be nice to stream and play those files on it as well ? Not sure if any of the applications listed support playback of DVD files.

I guess all the above is nice to have and the tablet has already met my basic requirements.

Regards

Jerry

Edited May 2, 2011 by jerrysimon

[Guest warriorscot]

I would give one of the newer ROMs a try the R8 hasn't been updated in a while, all the others use it as the base mostly but have been added to since. Best roms to try are either the corvus 5 or corvus 0.5 roms they have some nice features and the latest kernels with all the extras.

Ive yet to settle on an app for steaming honestly there are so many to choose from so a little trial and error to find one you like is probably in order. If you are having problems it may be because you aren't having the player use hardware decoding some formats can only be done in software but you take the performance hit obviously.

[Guest Richard_Arkless]

Im getting a vega possibly this week, I also got a zte blade and stream media to it on there

The setup I got is file sharing setup on the computer and has access to all my movies and music

I then installed cifs manager and added the share and a mount point and then used one of the media players on the market to play the videos

This is probably the best way I have found to getting media to stream to an android device

[Guest MrSnake]

Thanks, are you streaming HD ?

Most of my stuff is only 720p as I appreciate 1080p would be asking to much streamed on wifi.

Also I have a lot of DVD home vidoes ripped onto my NAS and it would be nice to stream and play those files on it as well ? Not sure if any of the applications listed support playback of DVD files.

I guess all the above is nice to have and the tablet has already met my basic requirements.

Regards

Jerry

720p as far as I know. It looks great tbh. I use rockplayer as it seems to have no audio sync problems. I am using Corvus/newbe's Rom with honeycomb theme

Edited May 2, 2011 by MrSnake

[Guest jerrysimon]

Well I have tried CIFS and vPlayer and am getting much better results thanks guys.. Not perfect, but it is getting there.

I must say the more I play with this little device the more I like it.

PS does anyone know how to start up CIFS automatically at boot up ?

Regards

Jerry

Edited May 3, 2011 by jerrysimon

[Guest jerrysimon]

I can't seem to get it to stream 720p very well.

I am trying various file steamers/players and playing around with settings like buffering etc, but no luck so far. I am convinced it should work :mellow:

I think maybe I should check my wireless routers to make sure they are operating at peak.

Jerry

[Guest Kevrae]

Just tried streaming some 720p file with cifs, the stock player and rockplayer. The stock player plays video perfectly no audio(which is fair enough as no codec support) and rock player is a little different for me. First it seems as though the audio is out of sync but then if I pause for just a second and play no problems even then jumping say 30 mins in still fine. Could be a slight buffering issue but very acceptable.

[Guest Theopulus]

I'm trying to setup a transcoding server as DLNA. So that I can convert videos on the fly to be played on my Advent Vega. The main problem is to discover the right configuration of the trascoded videos...

Has anyone succesfully tried Mediatomb with Handbrake?

[Guest jerrysimon]

Just tried streaming some 720p file with cifs, the stock player and rockplayer. The stock player plays video perfectly no audio(which is fair enough as no codec support) and rock player is a little different for me. First it seems as though the audio is out of sync but then if I pause for just a second and play no problems even then jumping say 30 mins in still fine. Could be a slight buffering issue but very acceptable.

Ok I think I know the problem. Most my HD content is in MKV format :mellow:

AVI HD content seems to play ok.

It plays VOB files as well so my wife can watch the hours of family footage with have on DVD

Regards

Jerry

Edited May 4, 2011 by jerrysimon

[Guest tomo1340]

Hi folks,

I could do with a bit of help here.

I bought my wife a Vega for her birthday, I have never used Android, but I am impressed with the Vega. All is well but I can't get it to stream our avi collection over the network. I installed ES File and can view the network no problems, however as it starts to stream it pauses, tells me it cant stream this media and procedes to download the file. I've also downloaded Rockplayer but I can't make it view the network files to see if it's an improvement. If I can get this working, not only will she be well chuffed with me but I might get one myself.

[Guest tomo1340]

Sorry for the bump, but I am desperate.

Please help guys, I've modded countless WM devices over the years but my inexperience with Android is killing me. I can't get my network files to play on anything other than the stock player. Even with Rockplayer installed. It opens my networked videos, streams for a few seconds then tells me you can't stream this media type. Which you can because I stream it to other devices all the time. I know it's something really simple, (like me right now) but I can't work it out.

[Guest tony barnes]

ESfilemanager won't stream, so its nothing you're doing wrong

Grab a copy of gmote, install gmoteserver on your media PC, set it up, and done. Works great!

http://www.gmote.org/

My HTC desire HD arrives tomorrow, I'm going to use it as a wifi hotspot so I can stream media from home to wherever I happen to be, can't wait :unsure:

[Guest tomo1340]

ESfilemanager won't stream, so its nothing you're doing wrong

Grab a copy of gmote, install gmoteserver on your media PC, set it up, and done. Works great!

http://www.gmote.org/

My HTC desire HD arrives tomorrow, I'm going to use it as a wifi hotspot so I can stream media from home to wherever I happen to be, can't wait :unsure:

It streams audio to the stock player seemingly.

I will try that Gmote now.

[Guest mxbob]

It streams audio to the stock player seemingly.

I will try that Gmote now.

the stock player has always had trouble streaming video

even if i make a stream the stock player should be able to play it will only play the audio without the video you can get streams to open in rockplayer but havent found a way to do this via any file browsing app

gmote seems ok but the streams always seem to randomly stop but i get the feeling this is down to problems with my network rather than gmote itself

[Guest tony barnes]

the stock player has always had trouble streaming video

even if i make a stream the stock player should be able to play it will only play the audio without the video you can get streams to open in rockplayer but havent found a way to do this via any file browsing app

gmote seems ok but the streams always seem to randomly stop but i get the feeling this is down to problems with my network rather than gmote itself

I just use 'movies' which I guess is the stock player? It doesn't pick up Mplayer, which is annoying as the subs, etc, aren't catered for with the stock. I will typically get 1 pause in a TV show, about half way through, though its quick enough that I don't care about it!

[Guest tomo1340]

Spot on guys, really appreciate the help here. In fact I am really happy as I can set my movies on the TV through the PC, no longer do we have to stand in front of it looking for peppa pig on the hard drive.