Video over Network

[dhallag]

Hello. Thanks in advance for your help. I have a PC and a laptop. I have many video files on the PC which I would like to run via some application on the laptop. I thought that all I would need to do is map a drive, open WinAmp on the laptop, and click on the file located on the mapped drive. Doing this creates choppyness and I cannot figure out how to make it work like playing a local file. I have tried windows medial player and that's a little better but still choppy. I've pumped many hours into trying to make this work and honestly I don't understand why it doesn't.

Then after doing more research, I thought that maybe I would have to stream the video. Setting up VLC on both computers, I was able to make the stream work, but the client playback is worse than what I tried above -- the video is so choppy, I cannot even watch. Not to mention doing it this way, I would have to go upstairs to my desktop, start the stream, run downstairs to my laptop and connect to the stream.

Botton line is that all I want to do is play files on my laptop (connected to a TV) that are located on my desktop. I see that you guys are experts at this -- can you give me some ideas here? With today's technology, I don't understand why this is so difficult to do -- especially since we can now purchase tivo like machines that do just this.

 

[folken]

Are you using a wireless connection? files usually won't stream over wireless unless you are using 802.11g and have max signal strength.
Audio and video should stream fine over a wired LAN unless they are DVD files. DVD usually streams at 6mb/s or more which in some cases could be more than even a wired lan could support.
Another thing would be to check your codecs. If you are running avi files or other encoded video formats you want to make sure you have the correct codec to play them. I recommend the k-lite codec pack if you can find it. It contains just about every codec you would ever need in one simple installer.