Android Studio is the Google-approved development IDE for Android. It comes with a bunch of tools to help developers make apps and games specifically for Android.
<firstimage=”//static.makeuseof.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/plex-icon.jpg” />Plex is widely regarded by many as being the best media player, manager and streaming application around – available for both Windows, Mac and even mobiles (though the mobile apps are not free). If you’re looking for a single solution as both a media center and server, then read on – this *is* the Media Center app you’ve been looking for your whole life.
If you read through and decide you’d rather check out some of the alternatives, have a look at Bakari’s round of streaming and converter apps for OsX4 Awesome Free Digital Video Converter and Streaming Apps for Mac4 Awesome Free Digital Video Converter and Streaming Apps for MacRead More, Tim’s collection of linux-based media center distros5 Great Linux Media Center Distributions To Transform Your TV5 Great Linux Media Center Distributions To Transform Your TVRead More, or Justin’s list of TV-ready media centre apps6 TV-Ready Media Center Programs You Should Check Out6 TV-Ready Media Center Programs You Should Check OutIf you're looking to set up a media center, you need to know what free software is out there. Choose the media center application that works best for you by comparing the best programs on..Read More last month.
Download courses and learn with offline player apps for Windows & Mac. Whether you are having trouble getting playback to work on the web interface, or you simply want a standalone playback utility, the 960H SmartClient Player is a very handy program to have. Samsung smart TV media server. TVMOBiLi is a high performance media server that allows you to stream your videos, music, and photos to your Samsung SmartTV.
Plex produces a media server and client app for Mac OsX, however there is only a server app for Windows currently available. To view your media on the Windows side of things, you can use a Plex plugin. Since Plex is essentially a fork of the XBMC app, there is very little difference in the client/player side of things.
How to connect to mac remotely. Office bandwidth is 150/150 but home might be much slower.
Both Mac and Windows Plex Media Servers can send data to the mobile clients (obviously, there is no media server for mobile devices).
I’ve made a little diagram to help explain this:
Download and install the appropriate version from PlexApp.com . During the install, point the app at your directories for movies and TV.
One thing that always annoyed me about media center systems in the past has been how utterly incapable they seem to be of identifying my eclectic collection and gathering the appropriate covers / metadata. The secret is to name the files correctly – this helpful page details the process, and though it may be tiresome, it does result in a beautifully unified media collection rather than a mess of folders. For those of you who can’t be bothered to read, name your movies “name of movie (date of release)” like “Steal This Movie (2010)”. I suggest you go through your collection and do a little renaming before you install Plex to give it the best chance of correct identification. If you have odd formats such as .img or .iso, then no worries – just name them and Plex will handle it all!
To launch the media manager and see what it’s found, click the taskbar icon (or right click in windows) and select Media Manager. You can then choose between TV and Movies, as well as Music if you chose to import that.
You may find a few odd matches – in that case you can easily right-click on the item in question, and select Fix Incorrect Match. this will bring up a list of possibilities. In general, I found that if the files were actually named correctly a match would generally be found – it was only when I had files that didn’t follow the guidelines that mismatches occured.
We wanted you to avoid having to sign in over and over every time you close your browser or restart your computer, and we wanted it to work all the time, flawlessly. Google has struggled to make this work well at all in the browser, where you frequently get signed out at random and generally have a poor experience. We spent months developing and refining a new technology that allows it to 'just work' work all the time, without sign-ins or typing or any extra effort on your part. In building a humanized email client, we wanted to acknowledge basic truths -- like that many of us have more than one Gmail account (personal, school, work, etc). Hotmail email client for mac.
The only complaint I do have is that the poster picture can’t be changed by dragging and dropping – it takes a bit of effort to navigate through the options for that – but then again you shouldn’t need to most times if it’s been correctly identified.
When your data is sorted, go ahead and launch the main player app (from Applications or the Start menu, not the icon already running in your taskbar). Bear in mind that you can’t use the mouse, as it’s designed for full-screen – so stick to the keyboard or remote. Hit Apple-F to switch to fullscreen, and start browsing through the options.
The movies and TV menus options don’t need an awful lot of explaining really, except for that you can change the view style to cover flow or grid view (my personal favorite) by selecting “right” on your keyboard or remote to bring up the view options:
Plex Online is the place to find plugins – such as the BBC iPlayer (UK only) – that enable Plex to interface with hundreds more free online video sources.
To access the online media content channels that you install, choose Video Plugins from the main menu. I especially recommend TED for some fantastic inspirational talks:
The app also makes a really good interface to YouTube and other social video sites. Just hit Search and type in your query – local media will appear first, as well as tons of internet videos that you can start streaming instantly. I actually found it easier than browsing the real YouTube site, since’s there’s absolutely no clutter and zero commentary from 14 year old idiots. Bonus!
To view your movies on Windows, you will need to install XBMC, then the add-on for Plex. Tim has covered the ins and outs of XMBC before with a thorough reviewXBMC 10 'Dharma' - A Mature, Feature-Rich Cross-Platform Media CentreXBMC 10 'Dharma' - A Mature, Feature-Rich Cross-Platform Media CentreRead More, so I’ll only be showing you the actual connector add-on. To install it, make sure you use the XBMC interface rather than downloading and installing the zip file manually. Head to the System -> Add-Ons -> Video Add-Ons -> PleXBMC -> Install. If you have the server software running on a remote machine, you’ll also need to configure the IP of the remote server in the Configure option for the add-on. You should then be able to browse your Plex media server using the Add-Ons folder from the main Video menu, complete with covers and meta-data.
I have to admit, having all my movies in one central place with all the metadata correct is incredibly satisfying. If you have a large collection you’d love to browse by DVD covers then I strongly suggest Plex. I’ve tried other solutions in the past, but none have handled my movies particular well, and I find the media manager of Plex to be the best overall. It’s a shame there isn’t a native client for Windows yet, but the add-on for XBMC means I can basically have the same fantastic player interface while we wait for the official client. Plex is going to form the center of my living room now, and I’ve even splashed out on the iPad app which let’s me stream any of my collection without format worries.
If you’re having any troubles setting it all up, then feel free to ask away in the comments or Q&A section, and we’ll see if we can help. There is also a detailed Guide To Plex that you can download or read online.
Oh and one last thing – Plex supports streaming over the internet too!
Explore more about: Media Player, Media Server, Television.
Until Plex can serve to DLNA/uPnP compliant devices such as my WD TV Live and my PS3, I won't even consider using it. Plex's metadata capabilities are amazing - unfortunately, without DLNA/uPnP, Plex becomes ABSOLUTELY USELESS to me.
There is also a Plex client available for AppleTV (black) users that want to jailbreak their ATV. It's a great way to get your Plex content to your TV.
Isn't xbmc both a server and a client? And isn't plex based on xbmc?
If so, why wouldn't running plex on an android be able to serve and stream to a an xbmc on a pc?
I currently use the samba app on my (rooted) android to stream to an xbox1 running xbmc, but I'm looking for a better way..
Anyone try Twonky? Doubletwist? ProSyst MediaServer? TVersity? AndroMote?
Heck, even XBMC serves to my WDTV Live. Who wants to watch a movie or a TV show on their Windows PC? (Unless, of course, it's a Home Theatre PC with a fast Graphics Processor and an HDMI output)
I was dismayed to see that Plex can't serve video to UPnP/DLNA devices like my WDTV Live. Twonky, TVersity and Playon are more useful for me if I want to watch on my (non-LG) HDTV.