set up web streaming of windows media player library

[severeano]

Hi
I've managed to set up windows media player to "allow internet access to home media", and successfully streamed a HD video over the web - very impressive. The only trouble is it works only for local media; any media that is stored on a network drive that shows up in the windows media player library on the host PC does not show up when accessed remotely. This is a big problem as basically all my music etc. is stored on a NAS, and is accessed via network drives. Is there any way to enable remote access for media on network drives?

 

[Darician]

If you add the folders on the network drives with your content to your libraries, there shouldn't be a problem. I'll have to test it out though as I've never really tried this before.

 

[severeano]

As I have Home Premium it won't allow me to add 'non-indexed' network locations to the libraries, so I used Zorn Win7Library tool to add these locations. The content is visible in the media player library, so that's fine, but it won't show up when accessed remotely. Could it be that I need to upgrade to Professional to truly integrate network locations into the libraries?

 

[Darician]

I've never really had to use Home Premium for an extended period of time so I wasn't aware of this limitation nor have I tried this. I will try it at work as we use Professional and let you know of my results. Additionally, when I get the chance tomorrow, I will try this with Home Premium and see what happens. I would assume an upgrade to Professional would allow this to work though. Let me confirm with a test though (or if someone else already gets this to work, let us know).

 

[Darician]

Interestingly enough I've been trying this with Home Premium and no dice. It will happily let me add the network paths and mapped drives to the library but when accessing it remotely, they do not show up. This is connecting to a Home Premium machine from a Windows 7 Ultimate machine. I have a machine with Windows 7 Professional that has a set of shares set up via network drives and paths in the Libraries. I will let you know later today what happens when I try to connect to that machine remotely.

 

[severeano]

Great, many thanks. It may be that because home premium doesn't support indexing of network locations, that causes media to not show up when accessed remotely. If it works for you when you try it on Professional then that may be the answer. Thanks for your help.

 

[Darician]

Actually, it doesn't work in Professional either. It seems that Windows 7 is intent on only letting you play media that is local to your remote PC and no remote files from that PC will be found. Although they will be listed in your library if you are sitting locally at the PC, connected remotely to the PC, they will not show up.

 

[severeano]

what a shame! Well thanks for trying anyway, and saving me an upgrade fee only to find out it still didn't work! I will have to think of another solution, possibly involving using a DLNA server on my NAS.. thanks for your help.

 

[chev65]

There is a chance this might work if you allow it in the security settings of the drive. Besides the usual permissions settings, in order to share an entire drive you need to allow for it using the secruity settings. I havn't tried streaming from a seperate drive myself so I'm not sure if this will work but it's worth a try.

To share the entire drive:
Open My Computer -> right click Local Disk D or which ever drive letter your drive is using -> select Properties -> select Security tab -> click Edit button -> click Add button -> enter the name of the User you want to set Security permissions (it is the same user name you've set the sharing permissions for, ex. Everyone will set the read permissions to every user. Put check marks in the boxes for full access and control -> click OK hit apply-> select the desired permissions -> click OK -> wait while permissions are set -> and your Done.

 

[jorpe]

There is a chance this might work if you allow it in the security settings of the drive. Besides the usual permissions settings, in order to share an entire drive you need to allow for it using the secruity settings. I havn't tried streaming from a seperate drive myself so I'm not sure if this will work but it's worth a try.

To share the entire drive:
Open My Computer -> right click Local Disk D or which ever drive letter your drive is using -> select Properties -> select Security tab -> click Edit button -> click Add button -> enter the name of the User you want to set Security permissions (it is the same user name you've set the sharing permissions for, ex. Everyone will set the read permissions to every user. Put check marks in the boxes for full access and control -> click OK hit apply-> select the desired permissions -> click OK -> wait while permissions are set -> and your Done.

Thank you, nobody responded to my thread about this exact subject... My home computer is a server of media with the main media on a second drive adding full permissions for everyone made streaming work again.