Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Building a Simple Streaming Media Server?

Posted by Cliff on from the on-demand-tunes-remotely dept.

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."

11 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Check out VLC.... by (H)elix1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.videolan.org/ Multiplatform, works great.

    --
    +++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
    1. Re:Check out VLC.... by sploo22 · · Score: 4, Informative

      You CAN'T pick anything from the remote machine in a VLC streaming session - you get to look/listen to what's served.

      As a matter of fact you can - it has an HTTP remote control interface, at port 8080 by default. See http://videolan.org/doc/play-howto/en/ch04.html#id 2533499

      --
      Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
  2. peercast.org by NZheretic · · Score: 2, Informative

    PeerCast.org is one solution. You can set it up on one PC letting only clients on the local network connect.

  3. just for clarification by croddy · · Score: 3, Funny

    wait ... lemme get this straight ... the server's gonna run windows, and the clients are gonna run solaris?

  4. GNUMP3d? by stevey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    GNUMP3d is a perl based streaming server which allows you to share a music/video/multimedia archive across a LAN.

    Whilst it's designed on Linux machines and only sporadically tested under Windows it should do the job you want - point it at a directory with your media files in it, then fire up a browser to choose your songs / stream away.

    Failing that Andromedia should do a good job if you have PHP on your Windows version of Apache. Their personal edition is cheap, and I think there's a free version somebody wrote designed to mirror it - but I've spoken to the author and he's a good guy so I'm happy to recommend it.

  5. Some web based streams by Sithgunner · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  6. netjuke by supersuckers · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  7. Been doing it myself for years by jorenko · · Score: 3, Informative

    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?

  8. SlimServer by MadChicken · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://www.slimdevices.com/su_downloads.html

    I've only used it on Mac, but it works very well. You can select media from a web interface.

    --
    SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
  9. Beyond simple by Solder+Fumes · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  10. Jinzora? by Milhouse_ph · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I was using Jinzora for a while and it's a pretty slick little php app that does pretty much what you are looking for:

    http://www.jinzora.org/