It’s not just individual media files that can be played over the network with PlayTo, whole playlists can be sent to other machines too. There are a couple of things you need to do, first make sure you have a machine running as a Digital Media Server (have a look here to find out how to set that up in Windows 7). Second there needs to be a Digital Media Receiver on the network (have a look here to find out how to make Windows 7 into a DMR).
Build a play list
The first thing you need to do is build a playlist in Windows Media Player, so drag the files into the right hand pane of WMP after making sure the Play tab is active. If you really like it then enter a name, it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to save it, you don’t have to.
PlayTo the play list
Next just go the top of the pane and click the PlayTo drop down, it’s highlighted in the picture to the left of this text, and select the device you want to play it to. If your devices have names that mean nothing you can change them easily by following the instructions in the Beyond the basics post. That’s it your play list should start to play on the target device and a window should pop up for you to control the playback.
Posted by Simon May, follow me on Twitter or if you like email me
0 thoughts on “Streaming in Windows 7 – PlayTo with play lists”
The PlayTo is really cool, but inside the house, I don’t want to go to the main computer to tell it to play some music in the kitchen (where I was). It needs to be contolled from a mobile phone, a zune, actually, any wireless device, even a sony psp, or a nintendo ds. But it’s a great start anyway.
I’d like to see a Pause and Play To functionality appear whereas if you were watching or listening to content in your living room and wanted to finish the experience in your bedroom you could Pause the content on the living room PC and have it Play To your bedroom at the spot where you left off.
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The PlayTo is really cool, but inside the house, I don’t want to go to the main computer to tell it to play some music in the kitchen (where I was). It needs to be contolled from a mobile phone, a zune, actually, any wireless device, even a sony psp, or a nintendo ds. But it’s a great start anyway.
I’d like to see a Pause and Play To functionality appear whereas if you were watching or listening to content in your living room and wanted to finish the experience in your bedroom you could Pause the content on the living room PC and have it Play To your bedroom at the spot where you left off.