Streaming Media across network

[dtm32236]

i don't really know where to post this, so I guess Computer Issues sounds okay.

Here's what I'm in the works of setting up:

I'm using this computer (computer 1, running on Ubuntu 9.04) which stores all of my music, videos, etc.

I'm setting up a second computer, computer 2, that I will use as a HTPC (home theater PC). This will be connected to my TV and receiver and will be running Mythbuntu.

What I'm looking for is the best way to steam my music/videos from computer 1 to computer 2 over a wireless network. I've researched ways, such as using a NAS or using Samba or VLC. There's seems to be too many options and I don't want to set this thing up and realize that all videos lag over the network.

I would set computer 1 up as a NAS, but it's not a dedicated computer. I will be using the machine for internet, email, programming, etc.

From here, I'm not sure how I should handle steaming my media. Has anyone here done this before? Any ideas/advice would really be appreciated.

Thanks a lot,
Dan

[aaron.martinas]

i used VLC to stream video from a wireless laptop to my network. i connected to the laptop over HTTP i belive, as opposed to multicast or whatever options were available. i found some pretty good instructions and it was easy to set up. previously, i had tried to use microsoft's media manger software, and compared to setting up the VLC, the microsoft ran as though the entire piece of software was designed to do everything in its power to throw an exception of some sort rather than to work. mainly because thats what happened.

i digress- setting up VLC was very easy. it worked somewhat well with the wireless laptop as the server. i expect it would work much better on something with more than 54mbits in bandwidth.

one particular issue i ran into with VLC was the stream not playing due to some type of buffering issue. i had to change the delay in VLC to give clients a chance to gather enough info to begin streaming.

[dtm32236]

Wow, good info here. I'll try this out and let you know how it goes.

Thanks a lot Aaron.