[hugh]

I have now been using Remote Potato for about two weeks now and am very pleased with it.

Essentially Remote Potato is server software that resides on your HTPC and can serve up videos and recorded tv to another web browser or a mobile device.

The server software is free, the iPad app was $6.99. Apps for Android and Windows Phone 7 apparently exist but they are 3rd party and I don't know the price.

I actually still use Air Video for streaming recorded shows because I like to convert them to MP4 and then stream them but Remote Potato does a good job streaming. Remote Potato also lets you adjust the streaming quality to deal with less than optimal Wifi connections.

You can also stream over the internet and 3G but I haven't tried that.

What I really like about this program though is the integration with WMC. I can browse the EPG and schedule recordings from my iPad or a web browser .

So far, I am really liking this software.

Anyone else?

 

[blueroomelectro]

I looked at it briefly when I first installed a WMC DVR, haven't really played with it but I'll give it another try.

 

[hugh]

My HTPC is hooked up to my projector and in another room so I really love the ability to sit at my desk and browse the EPG from my work computer or my ipad and schedule recordings.

 

[danomac]

Apps for Android and Windows Phone 7 apparently exist but they are 3rd party and I don't know the price.

I just looked it up on my Android phone.

It's called "Remote Media Center" and it's free.

 

[habskilla]

Hugh,

Have you tried Orb? If so, how would this stack up against Orb?

 

[hugh]

No idea. I briefly investigated Orb but for reasons I forget, I chose Remote Potato.

 

[habskilla]

I guess I'll set it up and give it a shot. If I remember, I'll post back here with my results.

 

[habskilla]

Impressive software.

I installed remote potato and been using it for a week or so. So far, the kids really like it a lot more than Orb. It does the simple things Orb doesn't do well like pause, rewind, fastforward but it is a resource hog! I'll see 90+ CPU utilization when streaming a mkv file from my fileserver which has a AMD Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition CPU with 16 GB of RAM. I also like the fact that I control the software, hardware and bandwidth.

Remote Potato is a very good solution to stream your home content to the web. Easy to setup. Simple to use.

PS. I've only been able to get the enhanced Silverlight streaming to work. For me, not a big deal. Also, I don't have TV setup. Using it to streaming videos.

 

[Tikker]

If you are just streaming video I would recommend media browser or Plex

 

[habskilla]

If these are free products, then I'll try them out.

Thanks

 

[habskilla]

Tried media browser or Plex and they both work as well as remote potato.

 

[john1985]

love the EPG integration (crash a lot on iPad though)

if only it streamed live TV...

 

[hugh]

It's the EPG integration that really makes this product.

FWIW, I have not had it crash on the iPad.

 

[habskilla]

Update:
Remote Potato is working so well that Orb is sitting idle in the background regulated to backup status.

With FibreOp's 30 Mb/s upload, the picture is very very good.

 

[Rideauman]

Based on all of your reviews, I wanted to try this out, but I can't seem to connect to my HTPC using my iPad with Remote Potato.

I am running dd-wrt - set ports 9080 to 9084 to the address in the instructions - no luck. I am also using openDNS - would that interfere? I tried turning off the firewalls to see if that made a difference - nope.

No big deal, just wanted to see what this was all about.

 

[habskilla]

@Rideauman
I've set this up to work with remote PCs and an Android phone. I've don't have a ipad to try it out.

 

[audacity]

Based on all of your reviews, I wanted to try this out, but I can't seem to connect to my HTPC using my iPad with Remote Potato.

Are you using it from your internal network, or from outside your network?

If internal, then check to see if the Remote Potato port is open on your HTPC from another computer on your network (use Telnet or some other tool for this).

If it works internally but not externally, then you probably either need to use a hard-coded IP address or setup a dynamic host name (DynDNS style) that points at your router, and then forward the relevant port to your HTPC.

 

[Rideauman]

In dd-wrt, there are two options: Port Forwarding and Port Range Forwarding.

It seemed logical to me that the Port Range Forwarding should be used (9080-9083 being the range). Port Forwarding had inputs like:

Source Net (???)
Port From
Port To
IP Address (which I assume to be the HTPC loop back address).

This should be easy, but it's not (for me!).