How to create a Home Media server with Windows 7

Entertainment has become a necessity of life for everyone, after a weary day they need an entertainment activity that can make them more releks. One of the entertainment is by listening to music or watching movies. When a family or home has multiple computers and game consoles may need to place files such as music, pictures and movies in one place for easy to access.

The place is also called the Home Media Server, Home Media Server itself can created from a device or a computer in a Home Media server. In some places, Home Media server devices is still very rare, it was probably caused by a lack of popularity of these devices or few stores that sell them. Home media server devices are usually sold without a hard disk, because the price becomes the next reason for some people to purchase and they prefer to use the computer as a Home Media Server.

One nice feature in Windows 7 is the ability to stream digital media between computers. You can do a good streaming video, music, pictures or other digital media. Streaming is not only accessible from computers, but also can be accessed from a console game as Playsation and XBOX. So if using a normal computer we can create Home Media Server device, why should you buy one?

To be able to stream video, music or images on windows 7 we need to run Windows Media player. Incidentally version of Windows Media Player that I use in this article is version 12 which is inherited from Windows 7.

Next to streaming follow the steps below:
1. Open Windows Media Player, 'Start' - 'All Programs' - 'Windows Media Player'.
2. Then to enable streaming, click on the icon and select Turn on Stream media streaming with HomeGroup

HomeGroup is a network settings on the allotment for home computer users. If the network settings are generally used to authenticate a user but in this HomeGroup using a password, so to be incorporated in HumeGorup you must know the password first. To find out more HomeGroup network you can visit the following link 

3. Then click on ‘What is a network location’
The main requirement of the HomeGroup network is the location network must be Home Network.

4. Then click ‘Home Network’.

5. Then on the Icon Stream click select the option ‘Allow remote of my player’ and Automatically allow devices to play the media ...

6. When Allow remote control window appears select the ‘Allow remote contrel in this network’.

7. Next you can move to another computer to check whether the sharing has been successful.
8. Open ‘Windows Media Player’ on another computer.
9. Look under Other Libraries there is a new Library of Andec, which is a library the results of sharing from the computer server.

10. Next you can go to Videos or music folder and try to run one of the file.

11. You also can run a remote video streaming from a server computer to another computer. But first you must activate the option ’Allow remote of my player’ on the destination computer.
Right click on one of Video then select ‘Play to’ then ‘LAB’.

12. When the Window appears as shown below.
Here you can adjust the ‘volume’, and the ‘Start Pause control’, ‘speed up or slow down’ the video in the destination computer.

13. In the video the destination computer will run.
Note: Windows Media player in the destination computer must be run first.

Taken from  PC Plus Tabloid Issued number 377