How to Set VLC Player as Media Server to Stream Media Files in Digital Home

Lets take a look on how you can setup a simple media server PC using VLC player to stream your media files to client PCs through wireless network in digital home.

http://gallery.techarena.in/data/519/vlc1.jpg


First you need to setup a centralized PC that stores all multimedia files in it.

Setup Media Server (in PC server):

1. Install VLC media player
2. in Windows PC.
3. Once completed the installation, launch VLC media player.
4. Go to File -> Wizard to open Streaming/Transcoding Wizard.
5. Choose “Stream to network” then click Next button.
6. Click Choose button, a new Open window will be pop up.
7. Click Browse button to choose a media file to play, then click OK button.
8. Click Next button.
9. When you choose ‘Stream to network’ option, there are multiple streaming methods that you can select. For instances: UDP Unicast - Stream to single computer, UDP Multicast - Stream to Multiple computers or HTTP - Stream using HTTP protocol.
10. Check “HTTP” and enter the IP of the server PC (Exp: 192.168.1.192), then click Next button.
11. Check “MPEG TS”, then click Next button.
12. Click Finish button to complete the media server setup

Then you need to setup client PC so that it can receive the media streaming seamlessly.

Setup Media Player (in client PC):

1. Install VLC media player in another Windows PC
2. Once completed the installation, launch VLC media player.
3. Go to File -> Open Network Stream
4. Check “HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/MMS”, then enter URL as {media server IP}:8080. Exp: 192.168.1.192:8080
5. Go to Customize field as located at bottom of the screen, enter the value as http://{media server IP}:8080. Exp: http:// 192.168.1.192:8080.
6. Click OK button to complete media player setup. It will start to play the media as playing at media server as setup above.

Take note that the setup only serves as a reference guide and you may need to modify slightly (ex: IP address and etc) to suit your own environment.

VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats.
Other important features like H.264 decoding, better Windows Unicode support, and a full-screen.