Windows 7 is a combination of some excellent features for the users from all the different domains. You can use a lot of functions within Windows 7 to have an excellent experience. One of the good ones perhaps is to stream videos to computer in the same network or even workgroup. Through Windows 7, you are able to stream video files with .mp4, .avi, .mpeg and similar extensions to other computers running Windows 7 on the same network or workgroup as yours.
You can do this by either setting up a complete “Home Media Server” or even by sharing your video collection to other systems on the network. The Home Media Server has more functionalities then the simple sharing as this can help you stream videos on other compatible devices as well such as PS3.
Ingredients you are going to need
The sharing of videos on other systems using the same operating system is not a major issue at all as you are going to need is a system with Windows 7 to act as a hub of all this communication in terms of media and other systems based on Windows 7 to act as the clients for watching the media. Apart from this, you will need video files in the formats given above to share on the network resource so that people can use them.
Streaming Videos within Computers
The first step to do this is perhaps gathering all your video files into the Videos Library. The Video Library is perhaps the location that is shared by default in Windows 7 as well as the “My Videos” folder. You can use any other location on your system to stream these video files. If you wish to gain access of these videos through Windows Media Player, you need to make sure that all these videos are added in the Videos library in the Windows Media Player of the computer serving as host.
The second step is to configure your system in order to make it able to stream videos over on the network. You need to make a few changes to the Network related settings. For this go to the Control Panel. Click on Network and Internet, and then Change Homegroup settings. On the home groups settings, click the check box that states “Stream my pictures, music, and videos to all devices on my network”. Save settings and exit the wizard.
The third step is to make a selection of which computer to allow access for the videos and which computer to block from viewing. You can do these tasks by clicking on “Choose media streaming options…” and then selecting the specific machine on the resource. You can then “Allow” or “Block” the machines from access to the streaming videos. Once you are done with the selection, click OK and then Save Changes.
This is all that you are going to need to make sure that you computer shares videos and streams them over on the network. All the computers using Windows 7 on the same network or workgroup can access to these videos through the computer acting as the host and the host will be sharing media to all the resources effectively.
