How can I access media files on home PC via laptop at school?

[UNCjigga]

Here's what I want to do:

I have all my mp3/aac music sitting on one hard drive in my PC.

I have all my video files sitting on another hard drive (some h264, some mpeg2 recorded via tv tuner, some mpeg4/divx/xvid etc.)

Now what I want is a simple, secure way to watch/listed to this media via my laptop computer at any other location, connected via the Internet. How would I set this up? The software should be 'smart' and support transcoding on the fly depending on available bandwidth/connection health, etc., and it should skip frames accordingly rather than dying if the connection goes bad. Ideally the system would let me choose which song file or video file to play, and present me with a dynamically updating menu of files sort of like 'media center' or media library in itunes, windows media player, etc.

So is there anything available that can do this? I've heard of using VideoLAN to stream media, but it sounds rather difficult to setup and I think you can only stream one file/dvd/device at a time (nothing on the client side to 'choose' files or inputs.)

 

[Leper Messiah]

RealVNC over VPN or somekind of secure port?

 

[xanis]

Yeah I would guess that VPN should work for this kind of thing.

edit: oooh 500 posts whoopie

 

[nadirshakur]

What if you setup an FTP client and make it private (i.e. setting up user logins). I did this for a while, with my 250 GB drive. Only problem I guess is your IP changing if you do not have a static IP. But I heard of programs that will monitor your computer's IP and when it changes it can send you an E-mail to let you know what the new IP is.

 

[Umberger]

Originally posted by: Xanis
Yeah I would guess that VPN should work for this kind of thing.

edit: oooh 500 posts whoopie

is VPN fast enough? i don't even think it'd be fast enough even on a LAN.

 

[nadirshakur]

Originally posted by: Umberger

Originally posted by: Xanis
Yeah I would guess that VPN should work for this kind of thing.

edit: oooh 500 posts whoopie

is VPN fast enough? i don't even think it'd be fast enough even on a LAN.

Wouldn't it depend on your connection? Not the method?

 

[Goosemaster]

orb.



mcuh simpler for somethign like this

 

[nadirshakur]

Originally posted by: Goosemaster
orb.



mcuh simpler for somethign like this

What is orb?

Edit: Never mind

 

[ivwshane]

Orb or something similar is what you are looking for.

All the other solutions only give you access to your files, they don't stream them.

 

[HalfCrazy]

Depending if your ISP you use at home blocks port 80. You could just setup a HTTP server and access the files that way. Maybe just setup a password to access it away from home.

 

[UNCjigga]

Originally posted by: HalfCrazy
Depending if your ISP you use at home blocks port 80. You could just setup a HTTP server and access the files that way. Maybe just setup a password to access it away from home.

Yeah but I was hoping for something I could setup on a custom port that would only do media files without opening up a can of worms for script kiddies to get inside and hack away with. I know I can do a custom webserver on a custom port with apache et al but I don't have the werewithal to set something like that up. I'm gonna look into Orb though...thanks Goosemaster for recommending Orb, and thanks Moderator for moving this to Networking!

 

[UNCjigga]

HOLY SH*T ORB IS AWESOME!!?!?!? WHEN DID THIS COME OUT???!? HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS??

 

[ivwshane]

It's been out for a while now. I tried using it to stream videos to my phone.