Building a Simple Streaming Media Server?
neomage86 asks: "I'm looking for a simple Network Jukebox. I want to be able to stream media from a Windows (it has to be Windows for other school work) server to remote machines over a LAN (only 1-2 clients at a time). I want to be able to choose the song that's playing from the remote machine, video would be nice, but not necessary, and it should be free (as in beer, I'm a student). Any ideas?"
"For some quick background, I'm an undergrad with a desktop PVR with several hundred gigs of media on it. I also have a laptop, and use computer labs fairly often. Anywhere on campus, I can expect to get a minimum of 10 megabits/s between my current machine and the PVR. My first thought was just Windows file sharing, but it breaks often (I'm not sure why, I have an Apache web server, and FileZilla ftp server running on the same machine that never go down) and I can't install Samba on the Solaris lab machines. Ideally the client should be web based, so I don't need to download anything to receive, but that is optional."
http://www.videolan.org/ Multiplatform, works great.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
PeerCast.org is one solution. You can set it up on one PC letting only clients on the local network connect.
Try RadioToolBox for php based or mod_mp3 for apache module based.
Or if you can write some php code, it's not so hard to write one up yourself.
Just list the files in a music directory and create playlist(pls or m3u) upon click.
I've been using netjuke for over a year, it streams mp3's and other audio files. I think video might be in it's future. Check it out http://www.netjuke.org/. I use it under linux, but works just as easily under windows.
Winamp and shoutcast. There's even plugins for winamp out there that give you a huge amount of control via a web interface. You'll need a windows client running winamp to receive nullsoft streaming video, but any mp3 player can pick up a shoutcast stream.
I suppose the only downside to this is that if you ever DO end up with multiple people using it at the same time, they can only watch/listen to the same thing. Though maybe you'd become something of a college net-radio operator, who knows?
Seriously, this is a non-question. Not only does Google turn up hundreds of straightforward options, but in 1999 I was streaming MP3s off a 486 SX-33 running Linux and Apache on a 13-gig drive, using nothing more complicated than saving a Winamp playlist and using Notepad's find-replace to convert each entry into a URL. From that point it's like the files are sitting on your own hard drive.