Streaming to ipad/Android in home (lan)

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1

Hi,

Can I stream media from the my book live in my home to my ipad/android devices making use of the wd2go app, or do I use that app only for remote access. (From office or on holiday). (Will I use ISP bandwidth using wd2go app for ipad/android streaming in my home)

Kind Regards

Stephan

2

WD 2go works equally well either home or away.  If at home, it does not use ISP bandwidth.

3

Generally speaking, the answer to your question is yes, however there are some caveats. For one, I have an iPad (1st gen) and I notice if i am streaming audio or video on my home network (linsys wireless router) that the signal will drop off if i am not near the router. This means i cannot really stream to all rooms of the house, even though the wireless access appears to be fine and allows apps like pandora to run fine. You may run into this problem in which case you may want to upgrade your router (on my to do list). Another issue to note is that wd2go is not set up to play non native video formats. It will
Not play typical video format used by most of the home video camera manufacturers (like jvc) and as a streaming audio player it is pretty clumsy. Fortunately, there are other alternative apps (like goodplayer and filebrowser) that allow almost any video format to be played, and they work well, BUT they are really set up to be used through your home network, not through a remote wireless network. I believe you can configure your wireless router and MBL to allow these apps to stream remotely but this is a more complicated configuration than the normal setup.

4

Thanks for all the suggestions!

I went ahead and bought the my book live. I have it now visible on my lan, and I went through the process of securing the drive, setting up a shares (private and public). I also disabled media access to some machines and devices on my lan.

As I have an iPad and Android tablet, I started looking for some good apps to access the data from my private shares. 8Player for ipad and mediaHouse for the Android is working well.

The iPad app ask for the password to access my private share as expected, however my Android tablet seems to be able to locate and allow streaming from my private share without asking for any passwords. (The tablet local media player app, as well as the mediaHouse app.) I am confused here, as I thought that only stuff in the public shares will stream. (My private share has been set to media serving All)

Now, I believe I can disable this behaviour under the my book live admin page, by blocking media players, I do not want to receive streaming data. 

Is this the only way of securely controlling streaming?

As an alternative, is it possible to isolate the MBL behind a 2nd router (with a new ssid). Than the 1st router serve the lan for all pc’s and devices, and if I want access to MBL

, I need to log in to the 2nd router? In other words, the MBL is completely hidden from router 1.

I am still learning about lan secure setup etc., so please bare with my questions if they seem silly. :slight_smile:

Regards

Stephan