Hi,

I just got an iPad 16GB Wifi yesterday. Now I'm struggling to find the way to use my iPad to play media file (AVI, ISO, VOB+IFO, etc) that stored on my NAS without downloading it to iPad local storage first.

Are there any app that allow me to do that ?

Any suggestion would be appreciated,

For video files I like AirVideo. App Shopper: Air Video - Watch your videos anywhere! (Utilities)

For music I like AudioGalaxy: App Shopper: Audiogalaxy Mobile (Music)

Thank you for your answer Bob,

Can it play over NAS ? Because I can't install Air Video Server on my NAS

No it can't install on a NAS... You would have to have it accessible from the computer running the desktop component of AirVideo. By the way there is another app, free, Zumocast, that does about the same thing if not better--it is what I use.

Now there are apps that can play more formats than the iPad can natively--though it's not robust--but for me it is better to have a device with a bit more horsepower do the transcoding on-the-fly and stream it to me.

It's better than converting everything to iOS friendly formats.

Tinman, what do you use to transcode your 'other' audio/video on-the-fly for your iPad? I'm trying to get mediatomb working on my ubuntu server, but struggling with the transcoding settings.

@Wutkung - I think it depends more on what type of streaming capabilities (if any) your NAS supports. For example, some products support streaming over SMB shares *if* the version of Samba embedded in the NAS supports it. Others may offer UPnP/DLNA streaming. In each case you need to find a compatible iPad app.

Just so I'm at least giving *some* concrete info, I'll say that at home I'm using a hacked Linksys NSLU2 NAS with MediaTomb installed (it's an open-source UPnP/DLNA server). On the iPad, I'm using Buzz Player HD to view my movies. On other Macs in the house, I use XMBC.

I have not tried Buzz Player via SMB shares, although the creators claim it supports it.

Hope this helps.

One last thing in re: to an earlier comment -- although I'm also using MediaTomb, I don't do live transcoding with my NSLU2 but pre-render everything to mp4s at a predefined bitrate/resolution. The CPU in the NSLU2 is only 200MHz and there's no way it could ever live transcode.

I'll second Buzz Player HD. Only discovered this recently and love it. Plays all my formats perfectly including streaming from my WD NAS.