Media Sharing

I do a lot of media sharing from Shiden, my desktop/server,  to my XBOX360 and Shoki, my laptop.  Both computers run Windows 7 Enterprise which makes things somewhat simple.  Never-the-less, there are a few essential tools and tips which make nearly flawless media sharing a possibility.

The core of sharing is creating a VPN to which all sharing computers must be part of (note this is not possible for the XBOX360, so it must be on the same network as one of the computers).  There are many ways to do this, but I find LogMeIn Hamachi to be the easiest and it does an excellent job.

Once all the computers are on the same network/VPN, a variety of options open up.  Windows Media Player can share its libraries which allows sharing of music, videos, and pictures.  But I find it doesn’t do such a great job of videos.

For videos and recorded TV Windows Media Center is a must.  Sharing to the XBOX360 is as simple as setting it up as a media extender.  However, other computers cannot be set up as media extenders.  But we can get around this using file sharing and register tricks.  You can find a great guide here.

Now, this works great for a lot of things, but it may be inconvenient or impossible to set this if you just want to show a mate a quick video.  For this TVersity is a lifesaver. It doesn’t work for recorded TV (wtv format) but it has a really nice interface that can be accessed from anywhere with a web browser.