Leave the house but not your media
Watch and listen on the road using remote media streaming
By Drew Williams
The media library on my home PC is a growing behemoth that's shambled from computer to
computer ever since I ripped my first CD. It's filled with TV shows that I thought I might
get around to watching someday, songs that I can't cram onto my portable
player, and a few thousand photos and videos of my family.
It's great stuff that I made the effort to save, but most of it used to be stuck on my home PC's hard drive and was largely unused. I didn't have time to
micro manage my videos and songs on other devices, and I wasn't keen on lugging my media around on an
external hard drive—my backpack was heavy enough already.
It looked as if laziness would trump entertainment, but then, as it has so many times
before, the Internet came to my rescue. After I installed Windows 7 on both my home
machine and my laptop, I started dipping into all of my media on the road using a new
feature called remote media streaming.
Two computers, one media experience
You might already be familiar with Internet media streaming from websites that post music
and videos. Remote media streaming is different. It provides a private, secure Internet
connection to your home PC so you can access your videos, pictures, music, and recorded TV
directly through Windows Media Player.
A laptop using remote media streaming to access media on a home computer
You need to set up remote media streaming on both your home computer and the computer
you'll use to play your home media—but after that one-time setup, all you need to do is
connect to the Internet, open the Player, and enjoy your media.
In my case, I wanted to allow remote streaming on the PC in a corner of my
basement and the six-pound laptop that lives in my backpack.
I started with the monster in the basement, a decidedly non-portable media computer (with a 500 GB hard drive) that's hooked up to my TV.
First, forge a link between PCs
I opened Windows Media Player and clicked the Stream menu in the upper-left corner of
Player. The first item on the menu, Allow Internet access to home media, opens up a dialog box
with choices that include Link an online ID and Allow Internet access to home media. I
didn't have a linked online ID (and you probably won't have one, either), so I clicked the
link and took a side trip to get one.
Internet Home Media Access dialog box
A linked online ID is like a secret decoder badge that pairs an online ID, such as a
Windows Live account, with a Windows user account—so your home computer will allow access
to a remote computer that has the same online ID. To make that link possible on my home
PC, I needed to install an online ID provider by clicking the Add an online ID
provider link.
The link sent me to a webpage with a list of available online ID providers. I picked
Windows Live, clicked the link to download the provider, clicked through the setup
assistant, and then went back to User Accounts, where I found a
new addition: a Windows Live entry with a Link an online ID link.
Because I already had a Windows Live ID through my Hotmail account, I could click the
link, and then enter my e‑mail address and password. If you don't have a Windows Live ID or
another type of supported online ID, it only takes a few minutes to sign up for one. After
I entered my online ID info, it appeared in User Accounts next to the ID provider. I
clicked OK, and the Internet Home Media Access dialog box
was waiting for me.
Then, stream in the field
After I linked an online ID, turning on remote media streaming was a snap: I clicked Allow
Internet access to home media and I was done (on one computer, anyway). I repeated the
setup process on my laptop—using the same online ID, of course—and I was ready to stream
my private media library.
I packed up my laptop and headed to a coffee shop that offers free Wi‑Fi. Because I
was on a public, unsecured network—and I identified it as such when I connected to it—I
could only receive streams, not send them. That was okay with me—all I wanted to do was
tap into my home media.
In fact, I had already deleted media files on my laptop to make room on the hard drive for
work documents. Windows Media Player was a digital desert when I first opened it, except
for one entry under Other Libraries: my home media library. I clicked the arrow next to it to
view its media categories, and then clicked Music.
Immediately, the details pane in the middle of the Player began populating with thousands
of songs. Every song I'd ripped or downloaded since 1999 was there. When I clicked
Recorded TV, every show that I'd recorded with Windows Media Center was there. It was as
if I was sitting in my basement, next to my radiator-sized PC, except there was more
light and better coffee.
Sometimes, there was a few-seconds delay after double-clicking one of the TV shows, but that's a
small price to pay when the Simpsons have traveled between servers, modems, and
routers to reach my laptop. The picture quality is great on my 14-inch screen, and I made
it through a half-hour show with very few pauses in the stream. My music played without a
hitch.
Since my first remote streaming session, I've opened up my home media library many times in airports, libraries, and even on the street in free Wi‑Fi hotspots in Seattle. It's still a
weird thrill to choose from more than 300 GB of music, videos, and pictures on a laptop with an 80 GB hard
drive. My media library has broken through the basement walls and is
now free to travel with me.
About the author
Drew Williams is a writer on the Windows team at Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft, he wrote about video games, airplanes, crime, and hazardous waste (although not always at the same time). Outside of work, his hobbies include raising small children, shoveling compost, and sleeping.
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