I’ve seen so many posts on the internet about how to stream to your Android phone from your network drive, so I decided to write about the solution that worked for me.

I don’t know if this will work for you but I can stream from my Freecom 1TB USB & Network drive, to my HTC Desire HD. This is what I did.

1. Forward port 1223 in your router to your network drive’s internal IP address. Make sure that the protocol is TCP AND UDP

2. Install ES File Explorer on your Android phone

3. Install a media player to your Android phone (I have installed Rock Player and MX Video Player on mine)

3 In ES File Explorer press LAN tab, then menu button>New>Server

4. Put the following details in the configuration page
Server: YOUR DRIVE’S IP ADDRESS
Username: the one you use to log in to the web interface page (default is admin)
Password: the one you use to login to the web interface page (default is admin)
Anonymous: DO NOT CHECK
Display as: WHATEVER NAME YOU CHOOSE

5. You should now be able to see your network drive as a Samba share.

6. Browse to the video file that you want to watch and click on it.

7. A window should pop up and give you a list of the players installed on the phone, to play the video file with.

8. Select the player of your choice and enjoy!

The above worked for me. I have even managed to set up external access to the drive and can stream over 3G (it is better over WiFi though). You need to use a service like DynDNS to assist with this. I can post up configuration for that later. The only caveat, is that “scrubbing” doesn’t work properly when video streaming this way, so you won’t be able to forward or rewind that well (if at all).

I would also add, that it may help if you have the most up-to-date firmware for your drive. I had to update mine as I couldn’t map the drive to a MAC running Snow Leopard. Turns out the firmware was to blame. Contact Freecom Support if you can’t see the right firmware for your drive on the site.

I hope this helps. When I get half a chance, I will try and record a YouTube video, showing it in action.

Please let me know if this works for you or if you have other implementations to share.

Dee