Top 5 free Media Players for Tablets/Phones

Tags

Daroon, Instream, Multicast Media Players, Top Media Players, VLC, Wondershare, XBMC

VLC player is by far advanced media player when it comes to Desktop, Laptop type of devices irrespective of the operating system (Windows, Linux or Mac). But when it comes to Tablets & smart Phones, native VLC media player is not available for most of them.

In our campus environment, we have offered IPTV (or multicast) services to students and VLC player was the recommended client as it comes with free of charge. Today’s story is different with overwhelming number of tablets & smart phones overtaking desktop/laptop usage. Therefore I had to spend time to play with smart phones & tablets to see its applications’ capability to receive generic multicast stream traffic. Based on my experience here is the list I would recommend to anyone.

1. InStream (http://www.haivision.com/)
By far the best media player client for ios/android type devices. It is the only one I found which support ios (Apple) devices (iPad, iPhone, etc). For apple devices this is freely available on itunes AppStore (https://itunes.apple.com/app/id564872227). For android it is not yet available in Play Store, but it will be available soon.

Below players are not supported in Apple devices. But works fine with Android tablets/phones.

2. XBMC (http://www.xbmc.org)
This is the only player I found that has the capability of view SAP announcement. Like VLC player, it will allow to pick a stream from a multiple channel list advertise through SAP. This is not available in Play Store, but you can easily download & install on your android device via XBMC website. For tablets it is easy to get it working. For phones having trouble with configuring the correct settings.

3. Wondershare Player
This is another great player for Android devices. You can download it from Play Store. Multicast Stream receiver configuration is shown in the below screenshot.

4. Daroon Player

Another player for Android devices & you can download it from PlayStore.

5. VLC Beta
This is still beta version for android devices. It is not a very stable & cannot see the feature of SAP which we can see on native client. This is also available from PlayStore.