Remote Potato is an iOS app that allows Windows Media Center users to scheduled recordings, view pictures, and even stream music or videos from your PC to your iPhone. Now the developer is preparing to launch an iPad app. It’s expected to hit the App Store on July 12th.

Windows Media Center is Microsoft’s 10-foot interface for controlling a PC. It’s built into most consumer versions of Windows 7 and it includes photo, video, and music features including the ability to view and record live television broadcasts if you have a TV tuner on your computer.

Remote Potato HD will let you view a program guide or browse for media on your computer. The app connects to your PC over a home network, but you can also use it when you’re away from the home to stream music or movies over 3G or WiFi. Several video quality options are available so you can adjust the stream depending on your connection. You can also download media to your iPad for offline access.

The app also supports AirPlay so you can stream media to an Apple TV. That way you can have Windows Media Center running on one PC in your house, but use an iPad with Remote Potato HD to send media to a TV with a $99 Apple TV set top box.

You can check out a demo video after the break.

The iPhone and iPod touch version is already available for $6.99 in the App Store. The iPad app should be available in a few days.

via The Digital Lifestyle
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OnLive lets you play console video games over the internet without buying a Playstation 3, Xbox 360, or other gaming console. The service streams the game to you and if you have a 5Mbps or faster internet connection the quality is close to what you’d expect if you did have a gaming system in your living room. The difference is you can play games on a PC, TV (if you have a set top box), or soon on mobile devices.

Right now OnLive offers an iPad app that lets you view games that other people are playing. Later this year the company will launch iPad and Android tablet apps which will let you play games on your tablet.

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Sony has released a new streaming music app for Google Android smartphones. It’s called Music Unlimited and it’s powered by the company’s Qriocity streaming music service.

The app is available as a free download from the Android Market, but you’ll need to sign up for a monthly subscription plan to actually stream any music. Sony is offering free 30-day trials, but if you forget to cancel by the end of the month you could find $3.99 to $9.99 on your bill.

The lower priced service allows you to tune into ad-free streaming music channels sorted by genre, era, or mood. The service can also scan your existing music files and allow you to tune into those tracks from any device. Sony calls this service Music Sync. Apple calls it iTunes Match. It’s six of one, a half dozen of the other.

If you spring for the $9.99 per month plan you can listen to any of 7 million songs in the Qriocity library from Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI as well as indie labels. There are also premium channels and a few other goodies for premium subscribers.

Sony’s Qriocity service is available in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Spain.

The international reach helps set Music Unlimited apart from some of its competitors. But mobile internet radio and music-on-demand apps are becoming a dime a dozen. Rhapsody, MOG, Rdio, mSpot, Slacker, and Pandora all offer similar services.

Music-on-demand service Napster is expanding its boundaries. Up until recently the service was only available in the US, but now UK customers can pony up £10 per month (about $16) to stream songs from Napster’s library of about 15 million tracks.

The company’s name is still probably best known for the free service that launched music piracy into the modern era a decade ago, but Napster has gone legit in recent years. The company offers mobile apps for Android and iOS. You can also pay about half the price for a package that lets you stream music to a computer, an internet-connected TV or other home entertainment device.

Users can also cache playlists, recent tracks, and other data to their smartphones to keep the music playing even when there’s no internet connection handy.

Overall the service sounds a lot like the similarly-priced Spotify service, which is hugely popular in Europe. It should be interesting to see whether Napster can carve out a niche for itself.

via EuroDroid

Google Music launched today, and while the service is obviously aimed square at the company’s own products, it happens to play nice with other devices as well. Since the Google Music Web app is intended to work nicely in Google Chrome you can bet it’ll work in other Webkit-based browsers as well — including Mobile Safari on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

There’s not even any wizardry required — just point your browser to music.google.com/music/ and sign in. You’ll need to request a beta invite first, of course, but early reports indicate that they’re fairly easy to come by in the U.S. The experience isn’t ideal, and you’ll probably notice a bit of lag when scrolling through your library (once you’ve uploaded some songs, obviously).

CNET points out that iOS multitasking is supported as well, so you can keep listening to your Google Music in the background while you perform other tasks on your device.

The folks at doubleTwist have been providing tools for synchronizing an Android phone with Apple’s iTunes software for ages. Now they’ve upped their game though, adding support for Apple’s AirPlay music streaming protocol.

That means you can now stream music, video, and photos from an Android phone to an Apple TV or other supported hardware. In order to do that you’ll need to download the free doubleTwist player from the Android Market and the $4.99 AirSync add-on.

DoubleTwist 1.4 for Android also supports streaming media to DLNA devices on your home network. There’s also beta support for Sonos hardware.

The folks at Engadget note that Twonky Mobile also offers a free app for streaming media from an Android device to an Apple TV or other devices that support UPnP or DLNA. But Twonky Mobile doesn’t sync with iTunes… if that sort of thing matters to you.

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When Amazon launched its Cloud Player online music locker service, it allowed users to upload music to the web and stream songs to any desktop web browser or to a Google Android device. But iOS was left out in the cold… until now.

Sometime recently Amazon Cloud Player began working with the iOS web browser. That means you can fire up Safari on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, surf over to the Amazon Cloud Player website, and stream any songs stored with your account. The music even pauses if you receive a push notification or incoming phone call on your device.

The web interface clearly wasn’t designed for a 3.5 inch display, and it’s not all that easy to actually navigate on an iPhone or iPod touch, but I suspect the iPad experience is actually pretty decent.

Apple is expected to launch its own streaming music service soon and it will probably be part of the iTunes experience. But if you’re already using Amazon Cloud Player or Amazon MP3 you can start streaming music right away.

via TechCrunch

Video game retailer GameStop appears to be working on a service that would let Android smartphone and tablet users stream video games over the internet.

In other words, you wouldn’t just buy a game, download it to your device and run it. Instead the game would be running on a remote server and you’d use your mobile device to login and play. The upshot is that you may be able to play games which may be far large or resource-intensive to run on a smartphone.

Joystiq noticed several job postings for a new GameStop Android division which allude to the new service. GameStop also acquired a game-streaming service called Spawn Labs last month. The company’s technology makes it possible to stream console games over the internet allowing you to play on a computer.

The technology also makes it possible to purchase or rent a game and start playing immediately, since you don’t need to download a full game or insert physical media into your gaming console.

There’s no word on when GameStop’s service for Android might launch.