Setting up a media server

[breadandbubbles]

i just wanted your collective advice. what would YOU do?

so, my home pc has about 4 TB's of media. im a big video editor and what have you, and i have LOTS of media, and music.

no, my girlfriend lives across the city. I just moved back home with my parents. im trying to find a way for both me, my parents, and my girlfriend to access this data, and stream it.

right now i have XBMC on an original xbox, and my parents have a Playstation3. both access my Windows7 Home Premium running pc via Windows SMB. very simple sharing. nothing fancy.

i use Orb to access this stuff from abroad.

NOW.

i need my girlfriend to be able to stream all my video and music on her TV. id love to set her up with something like XBMC, but how can she access my server?

i was told that this would be extremely difficult without a static IP, but i dont see why something like ORB or DynDNS couldnt help me.

also, i was thinking of having this all done from a separate box. i could build a home server of sorts. id like to be able to control who can see what from a panel on my Windows 7 PC. would i need full fledged server software for that? server2008?

i can figure that part out though. i just dont know how to get it to her.

EDIT:

Hamachi?

EDIT AGAIN:

alright, ive found this:

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/10/build...e-on-the-cheap/

he just takes a small nettop and installs XBMC on it. sound sgreat. but what i want is to run hamachi on it, so i can stream. unfortunately it looks like his installation replaces Windows. so..i couldnt run hamachi without windows...right?

im in over my ehad here.

Edited November 28, 2009 by breadandbubbles

[ripken204]

why hamachi?

there are different ways to setup networks.

me, personally, i have a file server running ubuntu.

i set up remote access to the server and i can stream my music from a web interface (jinzora 3)

for videos, i really do not like streaming video as it can get choppy and there are so many formats to mess around with, so i just use winscp to transfer the movie file over to watch.

if you only are going to be using an xbox tho, then xbmc should work just fine..

just open up the port on your router and firewall for xbmc then connect to it from an xbox.

i have actually installed xmbc on ubuntu and my roomate's 360 picks up my media.

the only thing is that the xbox had one of the worst libraries ever, it just plops all of the music into one folder without organizing it.

[breadandbubbles]

well, im not sure if i completely understand.

i want to set up a nettop with XBMC. only i want to use it to access a server over the internet.

how can i do this?

[ripken204]

also keep in mind that your upload speeds will matter a great deal.

you will not be able to stream video from a standard house connection which is like 40kbps upload.

music you can.

take a look at this:

http://xbmc.org/wiki/index.php?title=Types...Network_Sources

[Tripredacus]

My first step would be to check the ToS of my ISP to find out if my current plan (likely residential) allows me to run a server. If not, then upgrade to a business account. Everything else would depend on that.