Diy - Streaming home media made easy with mezzmo

I've been asked a few times to explain how I stream my media directly to my TV and I thought I take a minute and show you how easy it can be to stream music and video to your entertainment center. So real quick, all you really need is a computer to act as the media server, and in my case I also have an external hard drive that I put on my media files on. You also need a router to connect the various devices. In my case I have a TV connected to a Blu-Ray as well as an X-Box 360; and all three of those are connected through the router to the computer. Then you need some sort of DNLA software. I use Mezzmo. I am going to show you how that works. I have tried several free softwares, but I found that Mezzmo has a lot of functionality that I like. So what you need to do is you need to install Mezzmo by going to their website, downloading software, and installing it on your computer. And make sure that the use set up to start when the computer starts. So when you turn the computer on you want Mezzmo to start up automatically. You don't have to go turn it on every time you wanna watch something or listen to music. So once you have installed, what you need to do for the first time setup is a need to turn on all the devices you wish to stream to. So in my case I have a Blu-ray player, an X-Box 360 and a TV. I'll turn all those on, and then Mezzmo will detect them on the network. Now that you have the network setup and you have the different devices talking to each other, you wanna be able to stream some media and that is just a sample as adding media files to the library in Mezzmo, simply by dragging and dropping the files into the folders. In my case I have all of my media on a drive and anytime I add some media to my external hard drive because those folders are already in Mezzmo, then Mezzmo automatically populates with those new files. You can also create playlists. If you have a series of videos, favor music playlist, etc... Simply click Create Playlist, you can name it, you can even at some artwork, and then drag and drop the media files to that playlist. Now you can see I have a video playlist. Another cool feature is ripping a CD to the library. Simply pop in the disk, Mezzmo will search the internet, you may find several description options, search for the best fit, and if you like you can change the ripping options, and Mezzmo does the rest. In addition to folders and playlist you also have your last 50 plays, your type, or genre. So really once you have everything set up you may never look at Mezzmo again on your computer. Now with your media server on, you're ready to stream to your devices. And to take a look from my Blu-ray player I can go to videos or music and then scroll to Mezzmo. You will see your folders and playlists. Select your device, in this case using the TV show my music options, select Mezzmo from the TV menu scroll to my folders and select an artist for example. "No Sleep 'TIl... " "...Brooklyn" You can also do this with videos. "All my girls at the party, look at that body shaking that thing, like you never did see..." "Gotta nice package, alright. Think Imma have to ride it tonight." And then of course, everything that is accessible on the media drive can be found on the x-box 360 as well. "Don't want to give you up" "I dont want to hold you up" "I dont want ambiguous. I just know..." "I've had enough." I think one of the best features of Mezzmo is it trans-codes on the fly. Which means, I can add my DVD collection VOB files without having to convert them to any other file format. It's that easy... So enjoy.