The next step in providing digital content is being able to share your existing media out to the home. There are several ways to do this.

The first thing I want to talk about though is the codec issue. Video and audio can get quite large and there are many different ways to encode media to shrink its size down. In order to play a video you need the proper codec installed (a codec is a bit of code that properly decodes encoded video). The #1 issue with video playback has typically been that you don't have the right codec installed. Normally when you are missing a codec you go out and download the codec and install it on your computer. When you have a device connected to a T.V. though it may not be possible to add the codec you want (I ran into this with my XBOX 360 for instance).


Simple File Share
Most computers and devices can access file shares quite easily. On your media server just right click and goto sharing and then select the users. There are many tutorials out there on how to share a folder so I wont dig into the basics but there are a few key tricks to it.

Most shares require the user to authenticate upon attempting to access a shared folder so that it can grant or deny access to that share. Now unless you have setup a domain controller for your house, it will not know who you are and want a username and password that has been setup on the computer sharing files. A neat trick is that if you have the same username/password setup on both the client and the server then you will automatically be authenticated. Otherwise it will prompt you for credentials. If you have children then it is adviseable to have a folder for family movies that allows the kids credentials and then a higher rated folder that requires an adults credentials.

The other debate is what type of access the share should have. I typically have shared folders that are read only and one folder that allows write so that new content can be dropped in from any computer and then sorted into the proper readonly folder.

The cons with this is that you need credentials, not all devices work over a file share, not all devices can play all types of media (due to the codec issue). For instance my xbox 360 does not access fileshares so this technique does not work)

Windows Media Sharing
I believe that starting with Windows Media Player 10 is an included service that allows you to share media out that is added to your Media Player library. I think that this solution works pretty good for the scenario where a user has one computer running a client operating system (i.e. XP/Vista/Windows 7) with their media and share it out. I have not tried it as I have a hatred for the bloatware that is Windows Media Player but it may just work for you.

From my quick read it does appear to overcome the codec issue via transcoding. This means that the media player on your computer converts the video on the fly to a format the remote device knows how to play. Again I have not tried this but I leave it up to you to experiment.

Windows Media Center & Media Center Extenders
Media Center is a chunk of software that ships with some editions of Vista and Win7. It allows you to access all your media, photos, and more via a client. The XBOX 360 ships with just such a client so I tried it out. It was horrible. It could not play a lot of the videos I had (due to codec issues), it was slow to navigate, and I found the video was choppy a lot of the time. Granted, I tried this a few years ago and they have probably made improvements but I have moved on to other technologies. I also don't believe that you can have Media Center on a computer running a server OS (but again, I could be wrong)

Transcoding Server
I have found the best thing for me has been using a transcoding server called TVersity. The app converts video on the fly and streams it out to my devices just fine. The really nice feature is that you can also add internet feeds to the TVersity library. What this means is that I can take a show that published a feed and have my computer download that data, transcode it, and stream it to my xbox 360. I can now watch internet TV... on my TV! There is a lot of neat stuff you can do in this area.

The biggest issue I have found with TVersity is that the service will not respond sometimes and requires me to restart the service. Friends of mine have had no problems but I have had the issue on two separate installs now.

Network Considerations
For all of these solutions you will need to have the appropriate exceptions in your firewall to allow the services that share media to be accessible. Bandwidth can also be an issue with wireless networks. I currently have my server connected  to the router via regular cat 5 cable but the devices I consume media on are wireless. This works fairly well but media sharing is a bandwidth intensive operation so the quality of wireless signal you get may have an effect on streaming. If you can use a hardwire connection then I would recommend it as it is much more reliable than wireless.