Access External HD

[komark]

Hi,

I was wondering if there is an app to access music/vdos from your external HD connected in my home network to my iPad?

Thanks,
Omar.

 

[frodo]

For videos, check Air Video. If you have a powerful PC, you can live stream to your iPad with on-the-fly conversion. Videos that can be played on your PC (the codecs are already there and functional, I assume) can be streamed to you iPad without having to install anything than the App. No space is used or wasted on your iPad since data is stream! A small companion program must be install on your PC and wi-fi does the rest. Superb quality and no lag (my PC has an i5 processor).

 

[komark]

Hi Frodo,

My media is actually on an external drive which is connected to my router. I can access the external drive using my Laptop (which is on my wireless network). So I was wondering if I could connect my iPAD the same way I connect my Laptop to my external drive.

Btw, to access my Laptop from my iPad, I use Zumocast.

Thanks,
Omar.

 

[frodo]

I don't know how you access your drive from your laptop. Do you have to run an application to gain access to your external drive on your router? Does it allow Explorer to access your data through a UNC name, an IP address or a drive letter? Unless there is "an App for that", you will more than likely not be able to connect directly to it with your iPad. But if you can map or connect a drive letter on your laptop to your external drive, then you could reference that drive letter, at least with Air Video, as the source for you data in the server companion application running on your laptop that is used to stream to your iPad. Maybe Zomocast could do the same.

BTW, the new Western Digital My Book Live (2TB) NAS allows access (local or from the Internet) for iOS devices through an App linked to a MioNet service (just saw that info on cnet.com). As far as iOS devices are concerned, it might just be for Photos (but full access for PCs). Look it up carefuly before buying...

 

[komark]

I have a IOMEGA external NAS drive. I had to install a software on my laptop to be able to get the drives on the external drive to appear on my laptop.

I was actually able use Zumocast to access those drives from the external drive to my laptop and onto my iPAD. This might cause some buffering in my streaming - haven't fully tested it yet.