How to Configure VLC Remote

I quit cable almost 2 years ago and to be honest I have not regretted it at all but that is another history. Today I am going to talk about how to install and configure VLC remote so you can control VLC from your Android device like a remote control.

I use VLC a lot to watch series and I mean it a lot!!!! and I like to do it from the comfort of my sofa, desktop chair or bed.

So, the first thing you need to do is to install VLC remote in your android device. It woks on cellphones and tablets just the same, I use it in my tablet though  :)

In your computer you need to  install VLC and  do the next steps to configure to work with your device:

1.- Open the preferences window.

2.- Select the show all radio button.

3.- The go to Interface->Main Interfaces and check the enable the built in web server.

If you want to configure more options like port, ssl, etc, you can select HTTP node under Main Interfaces.

4.- Edit the host files and add your IP address to the file. One advice, configure your router to assign the IP to your computer otherwise you will need to edit this file every time your computer changes IP.

5.- You can test the configuration by opening a web browser and write http://server_ip_address:8080/ and you should see something like this

Finally, start the VLC Remote in your device and you should see your server running, connect to it and you are ready to do control your VLC as if you were in your computer. You can add videos to your queue, remove, clear playlist, access computer folders, pretty much everything.

One bug I found and I also reported is that if the you are trying to play has a ' , the player won't play it. It seems it is a character encoding issue but the developer was really fast to answer to it and the only workaround now is to edit the file and remove the ' . The project is hosted in googlecode and you can find more information about this configuration in its wiki.. It also shows how to start VLC server from command line.

You can find a lot more VLC configurations here. I did not know it was so powerful.

Now to time to watch some The Big Bang Theory and That 70's Show episodes :)