Notices

Hello

Ive dusted off my n900 and while the battery life sorta killed it as a phone I was hoping to use the phone as a media device around the house (I just hate to see this still amazing phone rotting in a drawer).

I can access my laptop server and play music off the device by navigating folders on the phone. However this is slow, tedious and doesn't allow good customisation of playlist. In Windows Media Player 12 there is a "Play To" button in the "Play" tab. By adding a playlist here I can select a device from the "Play To" drop down menu and stream the music to that device.

This would allow me to plug the n900 into the stereo system, and manage the playlist from my laptop with much greater ease.

However, the phone does not appear in the list. When I click the "Play To" button it just says "no media devices found" and so I cannot stream to the device. However if I go to:
Network and Sharing Center > Advanced Sharing Settings > All Networks > Choose media streaming options...
The device appears on the local network as "Unknown Device". I know it is the n900 from the MAC address. I've allowed media streaming for this device yet the problem persists.

Does anyone know if it is possible to stream audio to the n900 in this manner, and if so how might I approach the problem?

Cheers

You probably need a proper DLNA/UPNP client on N900. But I've never seen a reliable DLNA application/implementation so I can't help with that.

If you can stand iTunes on Windows and want a simple working solution, I'd recommend shairport. It would allow you to stream music from iPhone/iPad/iPod touch and Android as well.

Maybe explore VLC on desktop and VLC or gstreamer on N900.
The N900 can play music from Internet radio servers, so maybe a set up similar to an Internet radio server may help too?
I don't have the details so can't offer much else.

kh

Connect your N900 to a smb server (or DLNA if you want the server to transcode media before streaming) so that it can access all of your music and you can control the entire setup from your laptop by running MusicPlayerDaemon on the N900.

Slow wifi can be a real bottleneck though.
My N900 doesn't like streaming from a smb server, despite the access point being 4 metres away. DLNA does work better in this regard as it's less transparant and forces the software to buffer more before playback.

HERE is a link on how to set up MPD on the N900.
I might have a pre-compiled binary hidden away somewhere, which I can upload if needed.