Windows Vista: Stream Media PC to PC

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wmp11.jpg

In case you hadn’t heard (yeah, right), Windows Vista is now shipping. One of the more interesting features is Windows Media Player’s ability to stream media, not only to Xbox 360s and Media Extenders, but to other LAN PCs running Vista. Though WMP 11 has been available on XP for some time, this particular feature is not supported. Yes, I know, iTunes enables library sharing as well.

Microsoft writes:

You can share nearly any digital media file in your Player library, including protected Windows Media files that you have downloaded from online stores. To share a file in your library, the original file must be stored in one of your monitored folders.

The file must be of one of the following types:

  • Music files, such as Windows Media Audio (.wma), MP3 (.mp3), and WAV (.wav) files. Note that audio CDs inserted into your computer can’t be shared.
  • Video files, such as Windows Media Video (.wmv), AVI (.avi), MPEG-1 (.mpeg, .mpg), and MPEG-2 (.mpeg, .mpg) files. Note that DVD-Video discs inserted into your computer can’t be shared.
  • Picture files, such as JPEG (.jpeg, .jpg) and PNG (.png) files.
  • Playlists, such as Windows Media playlist (.wpl) and MP3 playlist (.m3u) files.

Depending upon how your computer is configured, the Player might be able to share other music, video, and picture file types in addition to those listed above.

5 thoughts on “Windows Vista: Stream Media PC to PC”

  3. Or you could just use Orb and stream anything including divx and itunes music to any of your PC, Mac, PDA, Xbox, Wii, PS3, smartphone… Nice try though…

  4. I agree there’s nothing revolutionary here, but it’s worth mentioning a few ways in which Microsoft has beefed up their digital media support with Vista.

    Andrew: It essentially does that for you, but allows you to keep everything organized within WMP.

    Alexi: Plug your iPod into your Xbox, you’ll be OK. ;)

    Bob: This will also stream protected WMV such as Amazon Unbox.

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