I've just bought a Chromecast 2 and overall am reasonably happy that it does the job with netflix and youtube 

I do however video files stored a my network. On my android phones and tablets these files are accessed through ES File Explorer which then uses a local video player (VLC/MX etc...) to play them on the device.

I've downloaded and installed the ES File Explorer Chromecast plugin and that does the job very well but only for MP4 files - it doesn't work for avi, mov, mkv files. I understand this is a limitation of the actual Chromecast which only supports mp4

Aside from playing the video on my phone and screen casting (it's a bit jerky and I can't use the phone for other things), does anyone have any other suggestions or perhaps an app?

(waiting for VLC to support Chromecast)