ANDROID HOME MEDIA CENTER
For most of us the android stick/tv box will be used to mostly watch movies from your local disk, local network or from the web. Fortunately this device can do more than just that, you can manage all your movies and tv shows through different apps available. Here are some interesting apps in case you have a huge collection of movies
MIZUU
This app will manage all your movies and TV shows. Indexing of movie and tv show files will be done even if they are on Samba and UPnP/DLNA compatible devices. Once you connect Mizuu to all of those video sources, it'll organize them all for you, download album art, full descriptions, ratings, reviews, and other metadata and display everything neatly. On top of that Mizuu is lightweight and will work an all devices without any problem. Mizuu will use you default or installed media player to play the movies and is worth the $3 price and should be your first app for any android home media center.
xbmc
The most popular home media centre application for PC can be installed on android devices. Xbmc will organize all your local or network movies, download full description, poster and ratings like Mizuu but uses its own player for the movies. So not every android device will support Xbmc but if yours does this is among the best media center app around with tons of additional features. Xbmc include the installation of add-ons that allow viewing of online media, skin download to personalize your media center, Integrated subtitle downloader, weather forecast features, picture and music player.
archos video player
Archos video player app offers a multimedia experience with the hardware accelerated video decoding support for most devices and video formats. Archos video player can play content from any computer/network storage in your local network (SMB and UPnP) or from an external USB storage device with automatic online retrieval of Movie and TV show information with poster and backdrop for both local and network content . Archos video player also has an integrated subtitle downloader
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SOPCAST PLAYER FOR LIVE TV CHANNELS & LIVE STREAMING FOOTBALL
To complement your home media center, you can even watch live streaming football matches through those devices provided that you have a decent internet connection, the sopcast player applications, this is a hit and miss app but still worth giving it a try. For more information click here.
CONTROLLING YOUR HOME MEDIA CENTER
The android stick unlike the android tv box does not come with a remote. Controlling you media center through the use of mouse and keyboard is not very practical. fortunately there are some more interesting options for controlling the media center.
AIR MOUSE
There are lots of varieties of air mouse available on the market, those work based on the integrated G-sensor, the cursor will follow the air movement movement so it just work like a remote control. However each make has its own specificity, the mele F10 air mouse for example has the mouse interface with quick shortcuts on one face and the full qwerty keyboard on the other side so this is very useful when doing son web surfing on the android TV while sitting on the couch. Newer models of the mele F10 even have the same sensor like on phones for playing games by tilting the air mouse. Some other mini wireless keyboards come with a track-pad attached. you only have to search air mouse on ebay, amazon or other sites to find what suit you most
ANDROID APPLICATIONS
You can even control your media center through your android smartphone, the play store provides us with lots of options:
- You have the droid mote a paid app on the play store, we need to install the server and the client app on the respective devices to be able to use it.
- If you use the Xbmc home media center you can have a variety of xbmc remote on the play store, i have not personally used any of them but they are free to try.
- The VNC server can also be sued to control you android TV, but we have more interesting use of it.
OTHER INTERESTING APPLICATIONS
- Youtube
- Cbox - chinese TV channels
- Pixel-DMS -DLNA server - to stream movies to all other devices
- AirPlay/DLNA Receiver (lite) - playing movies from IOS and android devices directly to you android TV
- MXplayer