Streaming out the back of your home router

Do you have google drive? One Drive? I put an AVI on my GoogleDrive and clicked on it and it opened in Firefox and played. With either drive you can share items with her. Last time I did it, it just wanted the email of the person you share with and it sends a link to them. She then clicks the link.

On Sat, 3 Feb 2024 03:45:20 -0500, Big Al snipped-for-privacy@invalid.com wrote

The Google Drive is no different than a flash stick stuck in my router. With the huge advantage of the file not being on someone else's server.

Both make the file accessible to anyone on the Internet with the link. But that doesn't answer the question of how to stream it.

Cool, who's router. I could use that.

"Oliver" snipped-for-privacy@invalid.net wrote

| My sister wants to stream some movies on her phone that I download. | She lives two states away so I have to put it on my router USB. |

I've never seen that. If you're using it then there are two potential problems. First is security. You're allowing access to your router by anyone. Second is that it's just data. Software needs to run on an OS.

If it were me I'd tell her to get a cheap computer or laptop aand stream it to a TV. As long as there's HDMI output and a TV with an HDMI port, you can set the TV as a second display that's duplicated and the HDMI will also handle sound.

I watch mainly two things. Movies/TV streamed from Netflix, PBS or Hoopla, and downloaded movies. In my case the downloaded movies are legal -- things like movies from the 30s and 40s that are on youtube or Archive.org. The streaming plays through a browser set to fullscreen. The downloaded movies play on Media Player Classic. You can also use VLC or whatever. Again, setting it to fullscreen means you're watching the movie on TV as it would normally be.

I use an old Win7 computer with one TV and a Raspberry Pi 4 with the other. Someone would have to set that up for her, but it's easy to use, cheap, and takes up about the same space as a pack of cigarettes. I paid $100 for the complete kit. With the RPi, the TV is the monitor. It's a version of Linux. The streaming or playing of files works the same way. There are USB ports to move files onto the RPi desktop for playing.

All of that would require that your sister figure out how to download files that you put somewhere online, but there's not much more to know once it's set up. Then she can sit back, relax and put away her magnifying glass. :)

A free OneDrive account nowadays comes with only 5 GB of quota. That's enough to hold a couple movie files. Google Drive free comes with 15 GB of quota. As already mentioned by Big Al, that would let you share your movies, and just with your sister, not with everyone on the Internet that tries to connect to your router (which you had to open to Internet access to let your sister get at the files). But you didn't like that solution claiming it was the same as granting access to your router and its USB drive which is not true. Your actual complaint is the transfer uses someone else's server for cloud sync storage.

Perhaps you want to run a web server, and grant her access to a file. You give her a URL with a path on your web server where is the file, and it gets downloaded by her web browser. Oh wait, you said she doesn't want to download. She wants to stream, so she wants you to do even more work for her entertainment.

So, perhaps what you want to setup is a video streaming server. Your router is not a streaming server. You'll need to dedicate a host on your intranet to run a streaming server, put it in a DMZ, get a static IP address for the WAN-side of your router or use a DDNS (Dynamic DNS) service to give a hostname to your router, and punch a hole in your router's firewall to redirect inbound traffic to your streaming host, figure out how to authenticate to your server to ensure accesibility to only those you grant access, and that is on top of having to setup a stream server. For some info on setting up a stream server, See:

Besides the info they provide, their article has a link to open source streaming servers. After all, you did cross-post to alt.comp.freeware. Their link points to:

There are other online guides on how to setup your own media streaming service, like:

Oh, did you check with your ISP if they permit running Internet accessible servers on your intranet? Many put in their TOS that operating public servers using a personal-use service tier violates their terms of use, so you have to pay to upgrade to a business service tier. Your ISP monitors your traffic volume. They'll know when the volume is sufficient to indicate operating a server on your intranet over a personal-use service tier. Are you going to pay for a business tier service plan just so your sister can stream movies from your intranet host when she could watch free movies from elsewhere? When you lose all your ISP's service when they suspend your account, you'll find your ISP is not so friendly when trying to get your account unlocked.

You acquired the movies through apparently non-legal means. Now you want to share them. You want to share with your sister? How do you know you sister won't do what you are trying to do? What if she gives the URL, password, or however you setup access to others to stream your movies, so lots of people start streaming your movies?

What is your upstream bandwidth speed? You might enjoy downloading or streaming movies from the Web, but that is using your downstream bandwidth. Lots, maybe most, users get asymmetrical bandwidths: fast for downstream, slow for upstream. Your sister would be pulling data from your server, so your server is sending out data, and that uses your upstream bandwidth. I get 900 Mb/s downstream, but only 18 Mb/s upstream. For SD videos, you need 1.1 Mb/s. For HD, 5 Mb/s. Youtube recommends 20 Mb/s.

They're oriented to you streaming from a server, but your sister will streaming from you. Your upstream bandwidth may be sufficient to stream here a video, but then you'll have less yourself for other upstream tasks, and likely you won't know when she's streaming your content to her. Also remember if she is streaming that she will have to stream again and again to watch the movies over and over. With a download, she can watch a movie as many times as she wants without impinging on your upstream bandwidth. She'll be constantly leeching your upstream bandwidth, and at times you won't know.

How much data quota does your sister have on her cellular service on her phone? She could easily eat it up watching streamed movies. Even if she has a cellular plan with unlimited data, have her read her contract since "unlimited" to them is not what "unlimited" means to you. Will she always use a wi-fi connection from her phone to her cable modem at home? Is she relying on downstream bandwidth available at wi-fi hotspots?

Does your sister HAVE to watch your "acquired" movies, or does she just want to watch some free movies? There are apps that connect to movie streaming sources that are free, like:

?id=com.imdbtv.livingroomhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ottoly.freetvhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.future.moviesByFawesomeAndroidTV and so on. Even Youtube's app can watch movies from Youtube some of which are free. Some free streaming services are mentioned at:

Even her own ISP may provide a streaming movie service for free using their app. Those are web-centric apps to facilitate using a streaming service. You can probably can just use a web browser to their site to do the same video watching.

So, you have to expend lots of resources, and do tons of work, just because your sis doesn't want to download files from a cloud sync service. Do you also do her laundry? She commands, you obey. Would she ostracize you if you told her you weren't going to share those "acquired" videos via media streaming, and told her to either get the media files using cloud storage to share, or for her to "acquire" the videos from the same sources as did you?

Windows Media Player (WMP) has a streaming server in it.

You could set it up on 192.168.1.2 right now, and sit at

192.168.1.5 and watch a movie.

That's an example of a basic streaming server.

Paul

Streaming requires a client to watch and a server to manage the content. At best, without some additional software, you can provide access to the files. An iphone may be able to watch it directly from its source or may need to download it.

On Sun, 4 Feb 2024 11:35:23 -0000 (UTC), Chris snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote

I wasn't sure how streaming works, but if that's how, I'll look for a free Windows streaming server (which Paul suggested might be Windows Media Player, but which I've never used (and which I never want to use) as I've instead used Media Player Classic incarnations the entire time Windows has been around).

The fact I've never set up Windows Media Player may be why none of the instructions on the net work because control panel options aren't there. Win+R control View by: Small icons Network and Sharing Center Media streaming options <<<<< this doesn't exist on my Windows 10 Pro

All the articles just *assumed* that the "Media streaming options" exist. Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network and Sharing Center\ Media streaming options

That option does not exist in my Windows 10 pro control panel.

After a lot of searching, I found this.

supplies two administrator-run registry files: But even running that first registry file as admin didn't ADD the "Media streaming options" to the control panel.

So, I'm still looking for how do we get the media streaming options to show up in the Windows 10 pro control panel. It may take a while.

It may be that you MUST enable the damn Windows Media Player though.

If that's the only way of streaming out of Windows, I guess I'll do it. But there must be a way to stream from Windows without that damn app.

I wonder if VLC or MPC-BE can do media streaming server tasks?

I use the free version of Plex to provide LAN and/or WAN streaming of my local video library, but that might be overkill for what you're trying to do.

I am using Windows 10 Home x64 22H2. When I run control.exe, I see:

I click on Network and Sharing Center, and see:

When you to "Windows features on or off" (appwiz.cpl, click "Turn Windows features on or off"), is "Media Features" selected?

After ensuring "Media Features" are installed, and in n Windows services (services.msc), is the "Windows Media Player Network Sharing Services" set for Automatic startup, and is it in Running state?

That mentions using the policy editor which you have with the Pro edition of Windows.

Remember if you allow external (Internet) access to the host where you run the server, it will be available to anyone that wants to connect there unless you put the host in a DMZ secure zone, and somehow control who can connect to the server.

Well, you're the one that wants to investigate using Microsoft crappy setup for media streaming. You were given other software suggestions that were designed to be media servers.

Those play media players, not media servers which you'll still need to setup for someone else to stream videos from your host to their rather than the simpler file download setups.

You'd look for a list of them somewhere, like Plex or Serviio (Java).

My TV Tuner has a streaming server but that does not count.

List not really complete.

Paul