Today’s smartphones, particularly those based on the Android platform are media powerhouses, so it is very likely that you have tones of photos and video clips you’d like to share with friends and family. But I can get pretty painful showing them off on your handset’s tiny screen. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could watch it on your laptop, desktop monitor or your large screen TV without having to trader the files onto your PC? Getting a USB cable and hooking up your phone to your PC is tedious and time consuming. And what if you happen to be at your friend’s place and don’t have your USB cable with you? Moreover, you wouldn’t want to transfer your personal media onto someone else’s PC.

In the following steps, we will show you how you can stream video, photos or music from your mobile phone directly on to a desktop PC or laptop. All you need is a simple free Android app called VLC Direct, a media playback application called VLC Media Player on your PC, and the two connected to the same network. Download VLC Direct for free from the Android Market. Download and install VLC on your PC from www.videolan.org. Connect the two devices to a wireless router and you are ready to stream.

Step 1 - Start VLC Direct on your Android handheld. A small wizard will show you through the process of how to configure the video streaming requirements. Be careful because if you accidentally quit the application or press the back button on your phone, VLC Direct will exit and not show you the wizard again. In such a case, you can click the Menu button and Go to Settings and Select the Automatic Connection Wizard to re-initiate the wizard.

Step 2 - Switch on your PC and connect it to a large display LCD TV if you want to enjoy videos on a big screen. Start VLC Media Player on your Computer. Click on View -> Add Interface -> Web Interface and leave the VLC Media Player as it is.

Step 3 - On the mobile phone screen, Press on the Start button and the VLC Direct app will start scanning for the machine with VLC Media Player on your local network. Once that is done, you will receive a toast message stating that it has detected the player and the configurations have been set for video streaming.

By following these steps, you will be able to stream media files onto your PC instantly. Using the Android handset, you can just sit back and scroll through your list of photos, videos, or music files and watch play them back on the big screen. You can also control the playback - stop, forward, rewind, pause and play, and volume controls as well. You can also pull out the list of media files on your PC and play them as well.