streaming music and movies help

[ste2425]

hi guys. the situation is this. In a few months time im moving from my student halls to a nice little house/flat with my girlfriend. What i want to do is be able to play the movies and music of my main rig which will be in another room on the tv and stereo in the living room. I have no idea how to go about this so would appritiate all help available.
the way i was thinking of would be to turn my main rig into some sort of home server? I have a old intel pentium 4 rig in bits that i could rebuild purly to get the films and music and play them on my tv. It has an s-video out(plan to upgrade tv when money arrives). I have a wireless router and both rigs have the ability to connect to wireless so how would i go about doing this?
Im not doing it right now as i said itl be in a few months but id like to no how now so it can be done real quick when we move an all set up. thanks guys n galls (oh by the way this is my first house of my own lol im rather excited thought id share that bit of good news:P)
stephen

[Easy Rhino]

yea you could either put together that old P4 system and run windows media center on it and share your media across your network. or you could go ahead and buy an xbox360 or a ps3. both stream media very well.

[ste2425]

Originally Posted by Easy Rhino

yea you could either put together that old P4 system and run windows media center on it and share your media across your network. or you could go ahead and buy an xbox360 or a ps3. both stream media very well.

i think id go for the first option save my mula. A pentium 4 @2.0ghz, 512mb ram and an old agp ati card would be enough just for movies right? no hd stuff as its a normal ,non, LCD tv

[Easy Rhino]

Originally Posted by ste2425

i think id go for the first option save my mula. A pentium 4 @2.0ghz, 512mb ram and an old agp ati card would be enough just for movies right? no hd stuff as its a normal ,non, LCD tv

yea it should be just fine for standard definition.

[ste2425]

Originally Posted by Easy Rhino

yea it should be just fine for standard definition.

ok so i no that i need to set up my pcas some sort of file server? and use the old p4 machine to play the movies? just so its easier for me to research

[Hybrid_theory]

Originally Posted by ste2425

ok so i no that i need to set up my pcas some sort of file server? and use the old p4 machine to play the movies? just so its easier for me to research

Just setup media sharing on Windows media center on the server. and on the box in the living room just open the files from the server. Both just need to be on the network, whether wired or wireless.

[ste2425]

Originally Posted by Hybrid_theory

Just setup media sharing on Windows media center on the server. and on the box in the living room just open the files from the server. Both just need to be on the network, whether wired or wireless.

ok thanks one thing windows media center is vista only right? my old rig is on xp. I can install vista but really crnt be arsed. Its an upgrade one so i have to install it then re-install it, the second time upgrading it, to activate an its a ball ach. Ill do some research on doing this in xp tho i now no what it is i have to do. thanks guys

[Hybrid_theory]

Originally Posted by ste2425

ok thanks one thing windows media center is vista only right? my old rig is on xp. I can install vista but really crnt be arsed. Its an upgrade one so i have to install it then re-install it, the second time upgrading it, to activate an its a ball ach. Ill do some research on doing this in xp tho i now no what it is i have to do. thanks guys

windows media player i meant. 11 has a different process to allow it then 10. may have to look it up how to do it.

[ste2425]

Originally Posted by Hybrid_theory

windows media player i meant. 11 has a different process to allow it then 10. may have to look it up how to do it.

thats great thank you both. Ill be able to research the rest, just didnt no what i had to be researching if that makes sense

[Easy Rhino]

yea you can windows media player instead of media center. just add your media over your network using sharing and it should stream just fine.

[ste2425]

ok i have one last quick question. There may be a chance that my router wont have an actual internet connection, could this cause any problems, and my other question is will the connent of my server be only visible on my other computer? how would i protect it?

[Hybrid_theory]

Originally Posted by ste2425

ok i have one last quick question. There may be a chance that my router wont have an actual internet connection, could this cause any problems, and my other question is will the connent of my server be only visible on my other computer? how would i protect it?

no, internet connection is not required. as for your 2nd question, im pretty sure on the server when you setup windows media player for sharing, you specify what machines you want to allow access.

i wanted to clarify as well use windows media player to view the files on your living room machine.

also nice avatar

[ste2425]

Originally Posted by Hybrid_theory

no, internet connection is not required. as for your 2nd question, im pretty sure on the server when you setup windows media player for sharing, you specify what machines you want to allow access.

i wanted to clarify as well use windows media player to view the files on your living room machine.

also nice avatar

thats great then, abour summs it all up. Thanks again for all the help id have no idea where to start other-wise

oh an thanks hybrid, i made it for the competion 'your first experience for dx11' or something i think it was called, but after i made it a realised id missed the deadline:P