(2012-04-27, 23:08)james_stewart Wrote: Another feature that would make Commander even more amazing would be the ability to play the media files on the iPad itself. A marriage between the AirVideo app and Commander would be so cool. Air Video is great, but being able to browse my library the way Commander allows, and streaming to the iPad would be the perfect combination.
This question comes up a lot. The short answer is, it involves a whole lot more than XBMC and this app. For one, unless all your media files are already in an ipad-compatible format and you're on a local network with plenty of bandwidth, you'll need some sort of transcoding solution, which XBMC does not provide. The app itself can't do this for you - that is, transcode (on the fly) your media in to a format that both works with the built in quicktime player in iOS and manages differing bandwidth speeds. That is a lot of work/processing power.
As it happens, Plex, which forked off XBMC 4 years ago, has already done this work - it's a major feature of the Plex Media Server. Plex has their own iOS and Android apps as well. Since the Plex Media Server and the Plex Media Client are two completely separate programs there's nothing stopping you from installing the Media Server in stand-alone mode and using it just to power mobile/remote streaming. Yes, it's not integrated in to the Constellation app - it's a separate app (that is also $5). And yes, it means you'll need to install Plex Media server on to a PC and scan your library in to it, since it won't use XBMC's library and vice versa.
To which I say, so what? While I am not a fan of the Plex client, their media server is actually quite slick, and very easy to add/scrape media to it - it has a very nice web interface, can grab stuff automatically, etc etc. And it does exactly what you want it to - streams media from your master PC to your iOS or Android devices, in or outside your house. You're only limited by the power of the PC running the server (for 1080p transcoding you'll want a 2ghz dual-core cpu at a minimum) and your upstream bandwidth out of your house if you choose to stream outside it. It actually works very, very well and a lot of us use it for this express purpose. Plex even has a MyPlex service that allows you to share (and revoke) access to some or all of your media library to friends and family.
How well does it work? My brother in law is on business overseas; he downloaded the iOS Plex app, I shared my server with his email, he logged in, and he can watch my media collection 3,000 miles away in 720p on his iPad. I have it running on a fairly decent server, and have a 5mb upload, so your mileage may vary.
Yes, yes, it would be great if this was all built in to the XBMC Constellation app, but it isn't, and isn't likely to be any time soon, because as outlined above there's a lot more to it then the app. Trust me, once you use it you will cease to care