Tag: Twonky Mobile »

The problem with our vast amounts of media nowadays is that it's often in so many places - stored on our computer, on our phones, on our game consoles - and sometimes those files wind up on just one place instead of where we really want them. Twonky Media is here to help alleviate some of that content dislocation, by presenting a solution for streaming media to and from your iPhone and iPod touch.

Twonky Mobile serves two purposes: first, it lets you access media being played remotely, so you can access media being played by remote UPnP servers and other Twonky Mobile servers on your iOS device. This means that you can listen to music shared from a computer, or if you have an Android phone and an iPod touch and want to listen to music from your Android on your iPod, you can do so easily. Second, it works as a media server - this means you can easily share your photos from your device to an Xbox 360 hooked up to your TV, for example. You can also use this as a middleman to beam content from servers to a device like the Roku using your iPhone or iPod touch.

One of the drawbacks, due in part to iOS restrictions, is that your music and video libraries appear to be unavailable for streaming, so you can't use this app to play your iPod library on your Xbox 360. This is an unfortuante limitation of iOS, to prevent music and video content to be used outside of any Apple-sanctioned use. This limits some of Twonky Mobile's use on iOS, especially as Android's Twonky Mobile has no limits on what content can be streamed, and it even works for transmitting to AirPlay receivers. The app also doesn't support multitasking yet, so you can't use this to listen to audio from a remote server in the background. So while the app could definitely make use of some loosened restrictions and expanded features, but if you're big on streaming content across your house, this could be worth checking out.