BrokenFloppy

In today’s connected world, most of us have tons of media, be it movies, or music. They are generally stored on our home servers. The problem arises when we are away from that central hub of our media. There are tons of methods to stream that media over the net, including Orb and Sling and many others. This tutorial will show you how to use Hamachi, a simple to setup VPN program, and XBMC to stream the media.

NOTE: Your experience with using this method may very. The streaming of media, especially movies, is very bandwidth dependent. If you have Dial-Up for your server, this will not work. You may experience buffering problems with DSL as well. The higher your bandwidth upstream on the server, the better your overall experience will be on your client.

This will be a 3 part process.

What’s needed:

• Hamachi – http://hamachi.cc
• XBMC – http://xbmc.org/download/

 
Outline:

• Step 1: Install Hamachi
• Step 2: Install XBMC
• Step 3: Setup XBMC

Part 1: Install hamachi (on Windows)

1. Go to the hamachi website and download hamachi. It is free for personal use, so on their site just click Download now. You do not need to enter any of the information, simply tick the check box and click Go To Download
2. Once it is download just double click the installer to launch it.
3. Follow the following slideshow which walks you through installing hamachi.
4. Once hamachi is launched, you will have to create a network, choose a name for your computer and choose a password for your network. 

NOTE: You will have to setup hamachi on both your server and all your clients.

Part 2: Installing XBMC on the client (Linux, Mac and Windows are supported — this tutorial will focus on Windows)

1. Go to the XBMC website and download the client for your OS.
2. Once it is download just double click the installer to launch it.
3. Follow the following slideshow which walks you through installing XBMC. If you want to launch XBMC tick the “Run XBMC Media Center” if you want XBMC to launch when you are done installing. You do not have to launch it yet.

Part 3: Mapping your remote drive through hamachi
Before you proceed, make sure both your server and client have hamachi and that they are both added to the same network.

1. Open up hamachi by double clicking on its icon in the system tray.



2. Right click on the computer which is your server and select Browse. You will be presented with a screen which is the same as if you were on the same (local network).



3. Right click on the drive or folder which you would like to map.



4. Give your mapped drive a letter and choose finish. It will now appear in your My Computer folder just as if the drive was installed in your system.



5. Launch XBMC. Click Video. Click on Add source. Click on Browse and select your newly mapped drive. Then drill down to the folder which contains your video / movie files. Once you get the folder you want, simply click OK. This is what you should see.
   
   Then click OK to complete the addition of the source. It will then show up in your Video sources. If you click it, you can see a list of all the movies which are in that directory.



6. Once you find the movie which you want to see, simply open its directory  (if that is how you have set up your server) and then click on the movie. Once it buffers the first few seconds, the movie will begin streaming. This is what you’ll see. 


NOTE: You can can follow the same steps in order to add your music from your home server into your XBMC’s library.