We want to present you a very useful solution to access music, photos and videos What do you have saved on your desktop computer? from your Android tablet or smartphone being at home. The idea is simple, it consists of make your computer a multimedia file server. Then with an application for your mobile or tablet you can access those files and play them.
We are talking about the plex app. In this article we will see how it works with the Android application, but there is a version for iOS and you can install the server and the player on Windows, OSX and Linux as well.
Some people will already know similar systems that involve hacking to make your Wii or Play Station connect to your main computer and play the files. In this case, it works for all the devices you want and there is no kacking.
With Plex, the server what do you install in your desktop computerFor storage and processor reasons, this is where all the multimedia files are. Then, you must indicate in which folders you save them so that you can then access them from your tablet or mobile phone. To install it you must first download it on its website www.plexapp.com. When presenting them to you on your mobile device in a list by file types, it will include a preview with the related images it finds.
There is a complementary service, myPlex, which allows you to create an account on the Plex servers and thus be able to have streaming your files to a tablet or mobile with 3G for when you are away from home. The problem it has is the speed of the 3G data transfer, especially in Spain, which can make the experience less than optimal.
Especially we notice it in the video because with music it usually works well. With this, we can replace other services such as Spotify or Grooveshark that also give problems with 3G. The good news is that Plex also works with your iTunes library being able to access all those resources from a non-Apple device and without the need for synchronization.
As for video, it plays pure video files and some linked to plugins like Youtube and Vimeo, but there are other less popular ones that do not work on tablets or mobiles.
For all streaming modes, it is important to take into account the quality of the network, whether it is 3G or WiFi, and the power of the server processor and the mobile device that we use. The data transmission rate can be set and we believe that 4 MBPS (megabits per second) is enough, if we go up it will probably not work well, but you can try or let me set it automatically.
There is a very special detail that Plex has if we use it at home. If we have several devices connected to the server and from the mobile we decide that we want to see it from a computer that we have connected to a television, for example, we can tell it to play it there. In this way, using Plex, the mobile can be turned into a remote control.
The price is 3,79 Euros, a bit expensive, but if you are one of those who like to entertain yourself all the time with music and videos, it may be a good option for you.
Buy Plex for Android on Google Play for 3 euros.