HomePipe Free review by Christim

[christim]

HomePipe Free v1.4
Currently ranked 4 stars by 214 people
Downloaded 10,000-50,000 times
Reviewed on a Motorola Droid with rooted roms (Android 2.2)



This application performs as advertised. Visiting their website at homepipe.net lets you download an app to your Mac or Windows based computer and install a tool on your computer. You can set up various sections of your computer to be available through HomePipe. You can access physcical drives or network shares. Once that is set up you can use the Android app or any web browser to access the files on your computer. It even will stream audio files to your android phone. Additionally it lets you copy content from your computer to your phone too.

pros:
streaming content from my computer to my phone means I don't have to move all my music to my phone. I had no problem using this over wifi.
For known upcoming outages where you won't have cell coverage you can plan ahead and download your files to your phone for local playback.

cons:
buffering over the phone network could be improved. Sometimes songs cut out, other times they are fine.I'm a little concerned about the security aspects of this. You open your computer up to this website and someone there may gain access to everything on your computer.

[Martin030908]

Might give this a try.

[hookbill]

I don't have a need for this. I never play my music off my phone anyway and if I do play it from iTunes I have Airport for streaming music to my sound system.

Doesn't mean it isn't really a cool app, it is. Just not for my phone.

[HDTVsportsfan]

Sunds like a really nice app. I don't listen to music w/ my Droid either. My wife does....but honestly...I have security concerns with it as well.

[hookbill]

Sunds like a really nice app. I don't listen to music w/ my Droid either. My wife does....but honestly...I have security concerns with it as well.

Peaked my curiosity. Why's that?

[Martin030908]

I use my phone for music constantly, but the security concerns are there for me as well.

[alphawave7]

I use Subsonic to stream my home collection to my phone..navigation of my 500+Gigs is remarkably snappy. I'm trialing the new AudioGalaxy, and it seems snappy as well...unlike Subsonic, which also caches or downloads the tune to your SDcard, AG is a straight streamer (although I suspect there's some partial caching occurring).

[alphawave7]

I use my phone for music constantly, but the security concerns are there for me as well.

I know many folks that will never run a server for fear of open ports, but who download trialware like crazy! LOL! As long as there are password protections (use non-dictionary terms) you should be fine.


edit: I just checked on AudioGalaxy, and it's still updating after 24 hours, and has less than half my 50K+ file collection scanned...we'll see!

[HDTVsportsfan]

Sunds like a really nice app. I don't listen to music w/ my Droid either. My wife does....but honestly...I have security concerns with it as well.

Peaked my curiosity. Why's that?

Even before Christim mentioned it in the "con" section....this part of his review lead me to reply the way I did...."You can set up various sections of your computer to be available through HomePipe."

I'm sure it's a fine product, I can just be a bit cautious sometimes...that's all.

[Martin030908]

Alpha definitely let me know how you like AG versus Subsonic.

I'm in need of a streaming app for my music I'll let you do the testing!!

edit: Just installed AudioGalaxy. Streams well. Gonna let it load up my music.