Internet Streaming with Windows 7

If business takes you on the road and away from your home and office, you can still access videos, music and photos by streaming the content over the Internet — thanks to Windows 7 and Windows Media Player 12. Joe Moran at PracticallyNetworked.com walks you through the steps.

Windows Media Player has long had the ability to stream media to other PCs and devices on a home network. But thanks to the Remote Media Streaming feature of Windows Media Player 12 — which is exclusive to Windows 7 — it's now possible to stream material across an Internet connection as well, allowing you to listen to music, watch video, or view pictures stored on a Windows 7 system at home from another Windows 7 system while you're away from home.

To use the Remote Media Streaming feature, you'll need at least two of Windows 7 systems running Home Premium or better (as Remote Media Streaming isn't supported on Starter and Home Basic) and a Windows Live ID.  If you don't have the latter, you can get one here.

Other prerequisites are that the system that will be serving the media (i.e. the home system) must be on a network defined by Windows 7 as Home (as opposed to Work or Public) and can't be a member of a domain. You can check/change the network type via the Network and Sharing Center. For the remote system, the network type isn't important.

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