Several interesting new mediaplayer apps have been released on the Android Market this year, and now it's even possible to stream Live TV and recordings from your VDR to an Android smartphone (or tablet) via HTTP.

Recently, I discovered the Android app "VPlayer". It is available as a free edition and as a donation edition ("VPlayer Donation") from the Market. Both editions are identical featurewise. The website of the developer (ABitNo) can be found here. The application can also be downloaded directly from there.

[Update 2010-12-15] ABitNo has posted detailed information about the current requirements of the VPlayer app in a thread at forum.xda-developers.com. He states, that you currently need at least Android 2.1 plus a processor that supports NEON to run VPlayer. It seems that NEON is available as of ARMv7 processors (for example Snapdragon).[/Update]

Although VPlayer is not an app designed specifically to work with VDR, it worked flawlessly in a short test within my local WLAN at home. I was quite impressed to finally see Live TV on my smartphone (Android 2.2) without having to change any configuration files on my yaVDR box (except for allowing connections to streamdev-server from my local network which is one of the first things one does after installing yaVDR). Please check the Youtube video below to see how it works in real life.

In the following video, there is a short demo on how to play a VDR recording via VDR Plugin Live starting at around 03:30.

[Update 2010-11-31] I have added a second Youtube video which also demonstrates the possibility to stream VDR recordings. (Patching vdr-plugin-live is required for this at the moment.)[/Update]

Are there other Android apps out there that are helpful for VDR users?

• Today, I heard that the Android app "yxplayer" is also capable of HTTP streaming and should work in a similar way. But I haven't found time to test it.
• There is also another interesting approach - without the need of a native Android app: droidVDR, developed by VDR Portal member Morlock. It's a web based streaming client which is specifically designed for VDR. It has to be installed on the VDR server and is based on Perl scripting language.
• There are a number of virtual remote control apps for VDR that work via SVDRP: "VDRemote" (free), "VDRroid" (free) and "VDR Control" (non-free).