Having a lot of music, videos, and pictures on your personal computer but you’re not at your desk most of the time and you still want to view your media content?
Use Skifta! Skifta allows you to stream your home media content to your Android phone on-the-go, and it is also able to stream media content from your phone to your friend’s TV or stereo.
Skifta is a free download for Android devices, and the desktop app works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The process involves two stages: Stage 1 setting up the computer and Stage 2 setting up the app to function correctly with the computer.
Skifta – your global remote control
Skifta is an easy way to control, play and enjoy your music, videos and photos at home and on the move. There’s no uploading to the web or syncing to your phone. In fact, you don’t copy or move your media at all. You just leave it where it is. Then, whether it’s somewhere on the Internet or on your computer at home you can access it remotely using your phone.
And here’s the magic bit.
Not only can you access your digital media from anywhere, with your smartphone you can stream it to DLNA-Certified™ TVs, IP-connected stereos, PlayStation 3 game consoles, Windows 7 PCs thousands of other connected consumer electronics devices anywhere.
So, you can take your digital media with you, without actually taking it with you.
Skifta
Stage 1
On Windows:
- Go the Skifta website (see links at the end of the post) and download & install the desktop application.
- Launch the application, and follow through with sign up process by giving your computer a name and creating a username an password.
- Open Windows Media Player (version 12 is recommended). Make sure that all your music is in Windows Media Player. This can be done through dragging and dropping or by heading to ‘Organise>Manage Libraries‘(you can even add your whole iTunes folder through organise).
- Head over to the ‘Stream’ menu and select ‘turn on media streaming’ and also ‘Allow remote control of my player’, make sure to press allow.
- Also in the stream menu now enable ‘Turn on Media streaming’
- Go to the ‘Network and Sharing centre’, press ‘Change advanced settings’ and turn on network discovery: this allows your Android device to detect the computer on the network.
- It is recommended by Skifta that you use XMBC, a general purpose media player that does not have the sharing limitations of iTunes. Download XMBC at their website (in the links)
- Launch XMBC, go to music and then select iTunes (on the right hand side of the screen) and then ‘Import my iTunes library’. This process will not actually duplicate any songs, it just makes them show up in the media player.
- One finished press escape (on your keyboard) to return to the menu.
- Select Network and then UPnP settings. Enable ‘Enable UPnP server’ and ‘Autostart UPnP client’.
- Finally while still on the UPnP settings select ‘Manage UPnP XXXX Shares’ (replacing XXXX with music, video or photo as required) and select iTunes from the popup dialog, and then OK.
- Download Skifta from the Android Market
- Select ‘Choose Media Source’ and head over to ‘Remote’. You now need to enter the username and password you created for your computer whilst setting up the desktop client. Once signed in, your computer should appear, select it and then your library.
- Go to ‘Choose Player’ and select your Android device, let it establish a connection.
- Now select ‘Browse and play your media’ it will let you do just that!
The downside of Skifta which I believe all of you would agree is that unlike other similar products(paid services) Skifta does not convert the video on-the-fly. Therefore, your videos must be in a format that your Android phone can understand. Nevertheless, it is one of the among its kind.
Play your home media content anywhere & anytime on your Android phone!
Three things that you’re going to need:
Skifta Desktop Client for Windows & Mac
Skifta app for Android
XMBC Media Player for Windows, Mac, & Linux
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