Windows 8.1 Windows Media Player 12 Internet Streaming

Question

Does 'Allow Internet Access to Home Media' no longer work in Windows 8/8.1 Windows Media Player? I have tried the following:

-Windows 7 PC with linked live ID hosting media, cannot see in Windows 8 WMP, logging into profile with same live ID. (can see locally but not over internet)

-Windows 8 PC logged in with live ID hosting media, cannot see in another Windows 8 WMP, logging into profile with same live ID. (can see locally but not over internet)

At no point does a check mark ever appear next to the 'Allow internet acess to home media' button on the windows 8 systems, even though it says that access to home media has been successfully allowed. If I link my live ID to another windows 7 system it works like a charm. I have tried this on multiple windows 8 PCs to no avail.

I am convinced that this requires either some kind of special configuration, or that this feature has perhaps been disabled in Windows 8. Or maybe it is something simple I am missing. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

Abstract:

1. Check if you're using the 64Bit player - 2 days of failure and fruitless analysis were caused by working with the 32Bit version in my case
2. If that's not it, you might want to have a look at some links included below; there are tons of reasons why this quite fragile artifact might break

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All right, after 2 days of spending time with this I get the impression that a lot of factors have influence on this tunneling concept of Microsoft- similar to the Homegroup concept, the idea and tools are planned as fool proof but beware when some minor things deviate from ideal preconditions - diagnosis tools are little and the endless pile of settings, dependencies, services, rules and policies offers uncountable combinations of not working environments-

On my search for mitigations I've come across long threads of individual tweaks which had helped many but regularly not all posters (none of them helped me), examples are to be found here:

• WMP 12 Allow Internet Access cannot be enabled - a bug? - Microsoft Community
• Media Streaming may not work with Internet Connection Sharing enabled in Windows.

To get an understanding of the backgrounds I cloned a VirtualBox Win8Pro installation (which - as I could verify - allowed to enable streaming) and upgraded the clone to Win8.1Pro. I found that I could enable streaming in the player under 8.1 too (although now the enable button had admin elevation, other than before and the diagnosis dialog would only tell me "unknown" for the forwarding port).

Finally I refreshed my Samsung ATIV down to Win8Pro and re-added the MediaCenter Pack again - streaming could be enabled (button with admin elevation, forwarding port unknown) and actually worked, this time tested with a real Internet 4G connection. So, I thought I'm almost done with the problem by means of a OS Refresh. After re-installing most applications (while several times testing if the streaming setting was still there, e.g. after adding BitDefender) I then upgraded again to 8.1. Surprise: I'm back to square 1, streaming can't be enabled! (after 1.5 days of testing and work... the only benefit by then seemed to me that a GPS driver which had failed to update under Win8.1 this time was updated under Win8 (clever me) and now my tablet has working GeoLocation services ...

Back to the original problem: I compared firewall rules, running services, Media Player and IPv6 registry settings and local policy settings very thoroughly between the 8.1 VBox clone and my 8.1 ATIV installation - some minor differences but no real clue and no matter what I tried to change on the ATIV didn't bring back my streaming.

About to give this issue up and turn to other streaming solutions (because I don't actually see how to dig deeper into this and asking MS will result in some junior support nerd sending links about "how to set up streaming with media player" etc.) I just wanted to check if my Shark007 settings had activated the right MediaPlayer version -

it turns out that the shortcut I've been using all the time (I am using Start Menu Reviver both on the VBox and the ATIV) runs the 32Bit version;

and the point: starting the 64Bit version shows me the streaming dialog without admin elevation, streaming can be enabled, diagnosis dialog shows the forwarding port and streaming works again-

Sp that was MY special condition which made streaming impossible - not to forget about the many other potential reasons you can find in the links provided...

Hope this helps others - I'd have hated to give this feature up...

Cheers Rob

Answer 2

that's the first post I've come across dealing with this subject, apparently the combination of 8.1 upgraders/buyers with internet media streamers is quite small...

as of now I'm afraid I have to confirm your observations, although I'm positive that I used remote media streaming on a Samsung ATIV X700 with Windows 8 some time ago; found all like you describe it on the same piece of hardware yesterday (now running Windows 8.1) and no whatsoever fix you can find on the net has changed that, all of them refer to Win7 actually-

today, I've revitalized an old Win8Pro installation inside of a Virtual Box and could enable remote streaming in WMP; whereas in Win7 the menu initially shows 4 items ("allow", "link online ID", "diagnose", "list of users" or so) in Win8 there are initially only 2 items ("allow", "do not allow") but once you click "allow" you will find the checkmark and upon clicking again the "diagnose" and the "list of users" menu items while the "allow" has gone... since it's Win8 there's no need to have an item about linking an Online ID since everyone has to use the MS ID anyway...

Will later on try to upgrade the VBox to 8.1 and see what happens-

An interesting observation though on one of my Win7 Home Premium (not Win8) servers: during rebuilding the WM Library the remote streaming checkmark disappeared, I could NOT set it again, it was exactly the same behaviour than on Win8.1...

some time later the checkmark was back again and I did not consciously change any settings to fix the situation, just was there again... but since then (until now) I can not get the checkmark for player remote control back in place...

Cheers

Rob

PS I tried to add some screenshots but funny enough you FIRST have to gain reputation here BEFORE you can do that instead of gaining reputation BY posting images :-)

Answer 3

I discovered that Win8.1 was launching the 32bit version of wmplayer.exe from the C:\program files(x86) folder. After running the 64bit version of wmplayer.exe from the c:\program files folder I was able to access my home media just fine.