How To Stream Movies Remotely From Your Desktop

Wether you rip your dvds, download movies, or have home made movies, wouldn’t it be great to watch them on your PS3 or even your tablet or phone when you’re away from home? Sure you could copy a few movies to your tablet or cell phone, but why waste your storage card space and have to constantly swap movies out to have space for new movies. You would only have a few movies available; Instead why not make your entire movie collection available from your home desktop computer by streaming them to your other devices?

I’ll explain how to set up your desktop to be an mp4 streaming server so that you can access your entire movie library on devices via your home network (PS3, tablet, etc) as well as remotely when you are away from home (via any device with a web browser).

PROPER FILE FORMAT

MP4 files are the best file choice for streaming. Streaming is when you broadcast the movie (or other media) over the internet instead of downloading the movie physically onto a device. Many devices and players support mp4, and therefore the file will not need to be converted on the fly as it is being streamed. Most of my movies were avi, so I needed a program that coudl easily batch convert all of them (instead of one at a time). I found, bought, and recommend a program called DVD CATALYST. I batch converted all of my avi movies overnight. This is a hot program, and very easy to use. Definately worth the 10 bucks. Time is money, and this program saves you both. Each new movie that you download is easily converted to mp4 with a click of a button (after initial setup).

Below are the settings I use when converting to mp4. The higher you set the kbps, the larger the file, and the more chances for your stream to be too large for the receiving broadband connection which will cause more buffering time outs or cause the movie to not even play at all.

• Video Quality: 900 kbps
• Sound Quality: 128 kbps
• Set the streaming flag to on
• Set borders to “Do Not Crop Borders”

MP4 STREAMING SERVER

The creator of DVD CATALYST also has a free mp4 streaming server called mp4ss (another reason why its worth it to support the program creator). Just launch the program; tell it where your mp4 movies are located; and press the “stream” button in the lower right corner.

CONNECTING FROM YOUR HOME NETWORK

If you have a ps3 or xbox etc, you can stream movies to your ps3 by using the internet browser on your ps3. Simply enter your desktops local ip address followed by port 80 (i.e., http://192.168.1.3:80) and you will be taken to the mp4ss main screen. You will see a list of all of your movies. Click on the one you want to watch and your movie will begin to stream to your PS3. Mission complete. You can stream to any device that is using your home WiFi (cell phone, tablet, etc). FYI: you can find your desktops IP by entering “ipconfig” at the command prompt (start menu / CMD / ipconfig).

Set Your Home PC to Always Use the Same Local IP Address

The router assigns your home computer a new ip address each time it (PC) is powered on. You don’t want to always have to figure out what the ip address is today, so why not just assign an ip address.

• Use ipconfig to find what your current ip address is
• Control Panel | Network Status and Tasks | Change Adapter Settings
• Right Click ‘LOCAL’ and select ‘properties’
• Double Click ‘Internet Protocol Version 4
• enter your numbers like so:
• 192.168.1.5
• 255.255.255.0
• 192.168.1.1
• *DNS -> 192.168.1.1

CONNECTING REMOTELY WHEN AWAY FROM HOME

Connecting remotely requires a little more configurating, but is still very simple. First you will need to set up PORT FORWARDING on your router.

ROUTER PORT FORWARDING

• From a web browser on your home PC, enter your routers ip address (usually: http://192.168.1.1)
• Once you log into your router, navigate to the port forwarding section
• Create a new port forward
• Enter a custom ip (which will be the ip address of your home PC. You can find this via ipconfig from the command prompt)
• Now set to ‘Custom Ports’ and select ‘both’ and enter “80″ (because mp4ss is porting to 80)
• Apply or save

FIND YOUR ROUTERS OUTSIDE IP ADDRESS
Next you will need to find your routers IP address so that you can connect to it when you are away from home. Go to What Is My IP .com to find your routers ip. *FYI: Your outside ip address can be changed at any time by your internet service provider. Mine rarely ever changes throughout the year. If you find that yours changes frequently, then you can look into setting up a dynamic ip. Use a site like dyndns.com and you won’t have to worry about not being able to stream because your internet provider has changed your ip.

WATCHING MOVIES FROM AFAR
Now that you have finished setting everything up, you can connect to your entire movie library from any device that has a web browser and internet connection such as your tablet, PS3, or computer. So if you are at your sisters house and feel like watching a movie, just pull out your tablet, launch the web browser, and enter your routers ip address plus port 80 (174.101.105.74:80). Hopefully you bought the hdmi cable so that you can watch the movie on her wide screen HD TV. :-)