I have a lot of pictures of my 5-year-old daughter, but when friends and family come over it’s no fun having everyone crowd around my computer screen.
That’s why I love this feature in Windows 7 called Play To. You can take photos and videos that are on your PC and view them on another device on your network. We have an Xbox in our house, so I’m going to show how I got my favorite photos from my PC onto our big screen.
Getting started
Windows Media Player is the easiest way to share photos and videos with other people and devices on your home network. The first thing to do is to enable streaming:
To open
Windows Media Player, click the
Start button
. Then type
Windows Media Player
into the search box and click
Windows Media Player.
You can share photos and videos with Windows Media PlayerInside the Player, click Stream. If you’ve already set up streaming, choose Media Streaming Options. If this is your first time, click Turn on Media Streaming. Then verify that you want to turn it on.
It's easy to turn on media streaming or choose streaming options with Windows Media Player
Set up media streaming
After you choose
Turn on media streaming, enter a name for your media library and click
OK.
Once you've turned on media streaming, you can name your media library
Set up your Xbox 360
Now you’ll need to make sure your
Xbox 360 is set up as an Extender so it can talk to your PC.
Read a step-by-step on how to do this. You won’t be asked to download any new software. Once you’ve set it up, leave your
Xbox 360 showing the
Windows Media Center screen.
You can set up your Xbox 360 as an extender in Windows Media Center
Choose the pictures
Now, on to the fun stuff—picking out the shots you want to show off! Here's how:
On your PC, open Windows Media Player and then click Pictures to view your photos.
Select the photos you want to send. To select multiple photos, hold down the Ctrl key and then click the photos.
You can select multiple photos in Windows Media PlayerRight-click the selected photos, click Play To, and then click Xbox 360 Media Extender (or whatever device you want to use).
You can use the Play To command to send the selected photos to your TV
And now you're done—unless (like me) you still need to go burn the popcorn.
When you're done, your selected photos will appear on your TVAbout the author
Marc Freeman has been a freelance writer and copywriter for the past fifteen years. He has also worked in television and film as a teacher, screenwriter, and copywriter. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and daughter, staring out at the rain clouds as he pounds out letters on his keyboard.
