How can I stream media from my desktop to other PCs on my home LAN?

I know that this is a basic question, and I'm aware of a similar one, but that answer does not appear to be evergreen - it's a simple link which says that VLC can do it, with no other explanation of the 'how'.

In short, I have a large collection of ripped DVDs on my desktop PC (stored in the living room). My wife has a laptop which she uses while taking care of the kids. We'd like to be able to stream some of the DVDs to the laptop when they're in the kid's room. We've found that when they're getting tired and cranky, but it's not yet naptime, a 20 minute Backyardigan's episode (or Barney, or Wonderpets, or whatever) can help keep the peace.

We'd like to be able to access our full library, but it doesn't seem to make sense to me to have that data duplicated to both machines, and the laptop's hard drive just doesn't have the same space the desktop does.

Can someone point me to a better resource than the other question provided? It's also worth noting that I would prefer a solution which can also stream subtitles for our ripped DVDs - my wife is slowly losing her hearing, and subtitles are a huge help for her.

Jeff

Posted 2011-07-27T03:39:25.187

Reputation: 123

1What operating systems do you have? – Canadian Luke – 2011-08-05T16:03:00.877

1I'm running Windows 7 x64. I'd prefer to avoid WMP, unless it has improved GREATLY since the hideousness of the versions that shpped with XP and older systems. – Jeff – 2011-08-05T17:32:27.650

1WMP has improved a lot. It also has default hardware acceleration. It's still not the best, VLC will play video with fewer stutters on a lower-powered machine. But the interface is clean and it loads fast, and with a good codec pack it can play most anything now. – music2myear – 2011-08-05T17:50:39.410

Only thing I really don't like about WMP is that the spacebar doesn't pause playback. – music2myear – 2011-08-05T17:50:55.993

Windows Media Player 12 is excellent. I used to use Winamp back in the XP days, where I'd agree, Windows Media Player just was not an application I'd use primarily. I rarely used it at all. But these days it has become my primary media player, since I got fed up with Winamp's instabilities. – Ben Richards – 2011-08-10T03:30:06.070

Control + P is not the best idea for a play/pause shortcut :/ – Pitto – 2011-08-11T11:00:13.570

The Windows Media Player Plus! plug-in includes an option to let the space bar play/pause anytime. After installing the plug-in, you can go to Tools - Plug-in properties - Windows Media Player Plus! - Hotkeys - Local Hotkeys to enable the option (press Ctrl+M if you don't see the Tools menu). – Pitto – 2011-08-11T11:02:26.483

Answers

If you have windows I'd use Windows Media Player upnp.

Everything is explained in Microsoft help:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Sharing-media-on-a-network-using-Windows-Media-Player

It's really easy to set up and test. I've never tested subs but as soon as I'll have time during weekend I'll try it and I'll add details.

Pitto

Posted 2011-07-27T03:39:25.187

Reputation: 1 766

Did you have a chance to do your test? – Jeff – 2011-08-09T18:50:54.427

I stream content between my Windows 7 PCs using Windows Media Player UPNP and shared folders quite a bit (depending on what I feel like using at the time). I don't know about subtitles either though; I haven't tried that out. – Ben Richards – 2011-08-10T03:28:49.487

Hi there! Sorry but had no time... Looks like DirectVobSub will do the job. – Pitto – 2011-08-11T10:58:42.420

Any reason you can't just access the files directly via network share? This should work fine even over wireless (HD might stutter a bit though). You would have access to your subtitles just the same. Streaming solutions are only really needed when you have to provide the video to more than one device at a time or you need real-time down-sampling to fit over a smaller bandwidth pipe.

Matt Molnar

Posted 2011-07-27T03:39:25.187

Reputation: 233

I see now this was suggested in your linked question. Still, I would recommend at least trying it before looking for a more complex solution. – Matt Molnar – 2011-08-05T16:00:51.580

I'd like a cohesive library, especially one that permitted tagging. File system navigation just doesn't cut it for us. It'll do if it has to, but a media library would be MUCH preferred. – Jeff – 2011-08-05T17:45:40.180

A detailed presentation of VLC streaming can be found in VideoLAN Streaming Howto.

However, I agree with XHR that this approach is quite cumbersome, and using network shares is a much simpler solution.

harrymc

Posted 2011-07-27T03:39:25.187

Reputation: 306 093

I would vote for Windows Media Center, and sharing with Libraries. Make sure she's attached to your "home group", then you can put your videos in the Videos folder and play them from any other Windows 7 machine in the network that has your Homegroup password. I can stream from my computer to my 360 AND to my gf's laptop without lag, with my computer running on 1.5GB RAM, on an old P4 at 2.8GHz

Canadian Luke

Posted 2011-07-27T03:39:25.187

Reputation: 22 162

The laptop runs XP, and probably can't handle 7. – Jeff – 2011-08-05T17:47:00.070

Then my answer won't help, sorry – Canadian Luke – 2011-08-05T17:53:05.417

While there may not be drivers for everything, a laptop that can handle XP is probably capable of handling 7. I ran 7 on a 7 year old laptop for a few years until the laptop died completely. 7 ran as fast as XP on the system. It was only a first gen Core proc with 2GB memory and onboard graphics. Only the graphics wouldn't support 7 at all so no acceleration. But 7's default graphics driver handled the native wide screen res of the laptop without issue so that wasn't much of a problem. Just couldn't game at all. – music2myear – 2011-08-05T17:53:12.187