streaming video from my harddrive?

sorry if this was posted already. I searched but didn't find anything...
I was wondering how to stream video off my harddrive into a TV I have in my house. I heard people using dvd/etc. but don't know how to do this. any help would be most apprciated.


thanks as always,
Eiji Mayo

The first thing you will have to think about is, do you have the bandwidth to stream video to all the people who will be watching? For most DSL circuits, 3 or 4 AUDIO streams will max out the upstream bandwidth, and might only support ONE VIDEO stream.

A good cable connection may support more streams, but not a lot more.

For my audio stream, I pay for a streaming provider that has the bandwidth to support multiple listeners to my stream, you would probably need to look into that.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what the technical requirements are, I looked into video streaming a while back and decided the cost/benefit was not worth it for me.

But if you have the bandwidth, others will probably provide more info, or check the technical forums, and good luck.

Thanks(^W^);. Yeah. I have 256KBPS direct DSL connection. I am only going to be using a single widescreen TV in my home, and don't have to many people that come over. only 1 or 2 at a time. But what I meant was, where you type in your parcel's (i'm renting but can play video/music streams) I can type in a web address like to a movie trailer and it works fine but don't know how to do that with something I have on DVD or my HardDrive. I have this media program called VideoLAN but don't know how to use the streaming feature. any help with that? ow! and thank you very much for your advice.

wonder if you could use file://

altho that would not stream to other users

You would neet to have at least a basic webserver running on your machine and have your machine conencted directly to the net (bad idea) or a special routing from your net conenction through your modem/router/firewall appliance to your computer where the webserver is rinning.

But also, you would be lucky to get ONE person viewing a streaming video that way anyway :/

It is generally FAR easier to rent some space on a website hosting provider, or find a friend that has some space, upload the file there then you just put "http://<your friends website address>/SLVideos/<video file name>" in as the stream address. (Actual path is the actual path on the website you uploaded the file, there does nt have to be an actual web page or anything there, just the file)

The 'idea' sounds great, except 2 main issues:

Bandwidth. You probably have a very limited upload bandwidth of 256kbps, which in therory would give you enough to use if the movie is postproduced to stay within a fixed limit of say 100kbps. This will fail if just a single avatar joinned you and tried to watch the stream as well.

Server: Using your system as a server to the internet would potentially leave you wide open for all sorts of attacks, they are not easy to setup and it wouldn't take a 'sniffer' programme long to see your open port and give you a lot of problems that could result in a unuseable system.

If you are going to use a service provider to allow you to host your movie, beware that you check first, most (a very high percentage) require that your 'streaming' content be solely linked to a hosted html page and not to be used as a file server.

Additionally, assuming you don't own the copyrights to the movie, you could easily find yourself in trouble with the law. It's almost impossible to defend that you are only watching this movie yourself, simply because you have hosted it on a server where virtually anyone can gain access, and the fact you are using the internet to 'broadcast' it to a 3rd party programme and not maintaining it encapsulated within your own system.