Syncing And Streaming (Part 3) - Transferring media via third-party services

If you want to send files to an iOS device without syncing, say a home movie to your phone when you’re not actually near your Mac, you can use third party service to do it. Apps and services like Drop box (left), Folder+, kkFiles, SkyDrive, Box and Air Sharing all provide ways to upload files to the cloud that can then be accessed using an app on your iPad or iPhone.

Apps and services like Drop box…all provide ways to upload files to the cloud that can then be accessed using an app on your iPad or iPhone.

The upside of this is that you can maintain a constantly accessible library of stuff in the cloud, storing more movies, music and other data than you could fit on your 16GB phone, for example, and access it via any wireless connection. It’s also a more natural way to work with data for some people, bypassing Apple’s sometimes restrictive syncing practices.

On the downside, you tend to end up reliant on the file browser of the service in question, and the quality and utility of these does vary. You can save a photo from Drop box to your device’s Photo Library, for example, but you can’t open a music file in the Music app - so this method works better for some media than others.

There is some file browser and downloader apps, such as Downloads and Filer, that integrate pretty well with the iOS Mail client and the system more widely, and let you work with documents outside Apple’s prescribed apps like Music and Videos. Some, like VLC for iOS, let you drag and drop movie files through iTunes’ Sharing tab and watch videos directly on your device despite their being unsup­ported by the Videos app. So you can drag AVIs and other non-Apple movies in and watch them with no conversion.

The Remote app also works with Apple TV and Airplay speakers, giving the same result. That’s pretty clever

You can control what your Mac is play­ing using Apple’s free Remote app on any iPhone, iPod or iPad on the same Wi-Fi net­work, so your music library can be anywhere in the house, and your speaker somewhere else, and you can control what one plays over the other from wherever you happen to be. The Remote app also works with Apple TV and Airplay speakers, giving the same result. That’s pretty clever.

Alternative methods

Apple and Airplay devices aren’t the only media streaming solutions around, of course, although they do work the best with Macs and iOS devices. DLNA (Digital Living Room Network Alliance) is an industry standard for streaming video, audio and images over a network. To use it, you’ll need a server, usually an app on your Mac, and a receiver or adaptor.

The two most common software servers for OS X are Twonky Media Server (from twonkyvision.de) and Elgato’s Eye Connect (elgato.com). When you install one of these on your Mac and launch it, it searches for compatible content and makes it available to a DLNA-certified receiver. The DLNA standard supports far more video and audio formats, and file types, than Apple TV, including DivX, AVI and FLAC.

A DLNA media streamer such as D-Link’s wackily styled Boxee may support more types of media than an Apple TV

Your content won’t be as neatly organized as on Apple TV, however, and it’s often quite difficult to find what you want. To anyone accustomed to Apple’s user inter­faces, having to negotiate a typical DLNA server can be an exercise in frustration.

DLNA adaptors come in different forms. Some Smart TVs have DLNA built in, allow­ing you to stream video from a Mac directly to the TV. Many internet radios also offer DLNA compatibility for audio files.

Standalone DLNA adaptors are avail­able from the likes of Philips and Western Digital. And D-Link’s Boxee includes the ability to stream media using DLNA along with its own direct online content channels.

If you have a Sony PS3, you already have a DLNA-compliant media adaptor, so you can stream media from your Mac to that using a DLNA server app (see overleaf).

A final option is to use a network attached storage (NAS) device to store and serve media. Most NAS boxes have DLNA servers’ built-in, allowing you to access con­tent even when your Mac is switched off.

You may also see media streamers advertised based on Intel Wireless Display, or WiDi. This proprietary wireless protocol streams media from a compatible computer to a WiDi adaptor connected to a TV. Unfor­tunately, it doesn’t work with Macs.