Zumocast gets some XDA attention, now ported to all Devices

Streaming your media from your PC to other devices has always been something that everyone wants. There are quite a few options out there, but not all of them work. Most manufacturers are including a DLNA service built right into many of their devices, like Samsung, HTC and Sony Ericsson. I know I have used many of them in the past and they functioned as to be expected. With root and custom ROMs though, we sometimes loose the OEM apps and must look for alternatives.

There is an application that called ZumoCast that was built into the Droid Bionic. The app is another alternative to streaming your media from your home PC to your Bionic. Bionic owners know it well and know how well it works. As with all great apps that are supposed to be exclusive to a certain device, it doesn’t take long for a port to happen. XDA member str8upx saw the commercial of the attractive kickboxer girl accessing her files directly from her phone and he knew he wanted it. So he set out on a mission to make it happen.

After searching and reading he found the apk only to find out it wouldn’t install. Well that tears it, time to get to work. With the help of another dev, dodava, they were able to get the application up and running. Over the last month and a half there has been 4 new versions of the patched application released, most recently version 1.1.2.

With ZumoCast installed you will be able to access you files, music and videos right from your device. The services works over Wi-Fi and 3G/4G. Allowing you actually access anything you want anywhere that you are. If that still isn’t enough to entice you to snag it, you can also access all your files from any web browser from any computer.

Set up and installation are a breeze, just follow the instructions below –

Download the ZumoCast app
Download and install the Desktop app
Create your free ZumoCast account
Point the desktop app to he folders you want streaming access to
Read, retrieve, watch and listen

Pretty simple set up isn’t it. It took me all of about 10 minutes to get myself up and running. The applications UI is not all that great looking though. The app ran good on my WiFi, audio and video were in sync. However I did run into a few issues with videos that would play great for a while then error out telling me it was an unsupported format. I hate that so much. Here is the list of supported formats according to ZumoCast –

ZumoCast can transcode any type of video file of any resolution to fit the needs of your mobile device.

For more details please refer to this list:

â—Â Â Â DivX (divx)
â—Â Â Â Flash MP4 Video (f4v)
â—Â Â Â Quicktime HD Movie (hdmov)
â—Â Â Â MPEG-2 Program Stream File (m2p)
â—Â Â Â Matroska (mkv)
â—Â Â Â Video Transport Stream (ts)
â—Â Â Â ASF (asf, asx)
â—Â Â Â 3GPP (3gp, 3g2, 3gp2, 3gpp, 3p2)
â—Â Â Â AVI (avi)
â—Â Â Â Flash Video (flv)
â—Â Â Â MP4 (m4v, mp4)
â—Â Â Â QuickTime Movie (mov)
â—Â Â Â Windows Media (wmv)

Note: Certain media formats may contain additional codecs that may not allow playback via ZumoCast.

I am fairly certain all of my files fall into one or more of those categories. Like most streaming media services, you may have to find the format that works best for your device and your needs. Ont he other side of the coin though, the web app worked great. I logged into the ZumoCast web site from 3 various computers and easily accessed my files and streamed a movie.

As the dev states it should work for all Android devices. Of course various factors can still play a roll on how will it works out for you. Even though it doesn’t seem to be perfect on my Vibrant, I think I will play around a bit and at least keep it installed on my PC for the web access.

Source: XDA via OMGDroid