Are you overwhelmed by all the media on your system and want to centralize it? Do you want to be able to stream your videos and songs from a single location to your mobile or other media device? If so, Subsonic could come to your rescue by letting you do those things without charging you a dime.
Subsonic is what’s called a ‘total media streaming solution’; essentially, it’s a program that not only helps organize and keep your media files in a central location but also allows you to stream them (meaning you can watch or listen to them live from a remote location and device) from your PC to your mobile device and even over the internet.
While there are plenty of programs out there that can do these things, Subsonic stands out with a slick graphical user interface (GUI) as well as a price tag of nothing at all. The download is less than 40MB and it requires Java and a decent Wi-Fi network is recommended for the streaming options.
When you fire up Subsonic for the first time you’ll get an unobtrusive little icon in your system tray showing you that it’s running. Right clicking on the icon will give you two options, one for configuration and one for opening the browser interface (the heart of the program, really) to get started with all the organizing and streaming you could want. It will give you some step by step instructions once you open the browser interface and you’re off and playing.
Features of the program’s basic running environment include such basic and expected media tools as securing your ‘server’ with a username and password, shuffle play, text search for particular files/tracks and scheduling of scans for newly added media. One of the most important ones for modern use that it does support is the multiple tags for each media file, like cover art and album info. You’ll have control over nearly every single aspect of your media server (whether it is your main system or a dedicated ‘box’ separate from your main) including adding folders and subfolders, transcode on the fly options, podcast schedules and recordings, and of course more basic options like what port to use. Each section of the program is pretty well documented right there on the page so you will not have to spend much time learning how to use it. As soon as you’ve read an instruction, you can continue straight to making use of that feature.
The program is available for multiple different operating systems, and also does have mobile apps available as well so you can watch or listen to your media files on the go with your Android or other mobile device capable of running the app. There’s no ad bar or toolbar installed, and there’s no money to pay to get and use the program so I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who has been looking for a media solution that will allow them to stream to multiple devices at one time, or anyone who has just been looking for a new media solution to replace their old one. Until next time, my friends.
