SmartStream

It has been months since we could go out to the movies with friends and family, but there still are ways to view movies with friends during this time of safe social distancing. At a basic level, you could coordinate a movie start time while having a FaceTime conversation on your phones. You could also start a movie and share your screen in Zoom, Discord, or Microsoft Teams. But a better option is to install a web browser extension that synchronizes the viewing experience alongside video-chat or text messaging.

Media renderer is another Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) certification that is part of the home network streaming experience. It can play videos, photos and music that are sent to it from a media controller. I know of no devices that are exclusively media renderers. Typically the ability to accept media files is a feature of media streaming device.

In the world of digital media, there’s no doubt that you have downloaded movies and/or music, and saved digital photos to your computer. Now you want to watch them on your TV and home theater. Before you can stream the movies, music or photos from your computer, networked external hard drive, or network attached storage (NAS) drive, the media player must first find the sources—“see” the device where you have saved your media files. The computer or device where your files are saved is called a “media server.”

Miracast can send photos, music and movies from a smartphone or tablet to your TV. Find out how it works and how it compares with Apple AirPlay and the Google Chromecast.

Have you seen any or all of the 10 films nominated for Best Picture? Or any of the films nominated in one of the other six categories? The 96th Academy Awards ceremony commences on Sunday, March 10 so there’s still time to catch any (or all) of the flicks you haven’t seen. To save you time, we put together a list of movies in the major nominating categories with details on where you can watch them.

With the ever-growing fragmentation of streaming services, we now need to search to find the Christmas movies and shows we watch year after year. Here’s a little help.