One of the great benefits of storing your music, video and photos together on a home server is the ability to enjoy those files on a wide range of devices. Whether it’s a digital media receiver attached to the TV, another PC or netbook in the house or even a mobile phone connected to your wireless network, your media is ready to be played when you are.
Apple’s range of mobile devices – the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad are great devices for playing video. Whilst the iPod Touch and iPhone have small screens, they’re ideal for individual viewing of movies and TV programmes. The large screen of the iPad opens up viewing for more than one person, and of course, remember that these devices also offer TV out, so you can connect them to your TV with an appropriate cable, and enjoy videos on the big screen.
Of course, the challenge is to enable media streaming between your home server and the Apple device. That’s where we come in, ably supported by a few home server and Apple apps that create the necessary network connections between the hardware, and allow videos to stream between the two. Once you’ve got it all up and running, you’ll be surprised just how well it all works!
So, our Summer of Home Server kicks off with Project #1: Watch Video on Your iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch With Air Video and Windows Home Server.
1. Download and Install Air Video on Your Device
Download and install Air Video from the App Store on your iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad. Make sure you select the iPad version if you’re going to stream on that device.
2. Download Bonjour for Windows
Download Bonjour for Windows from Apple’s support site – this is required to allow Air Video to discover the home server. Or, as Apple put it:
Bonjour, also known as zero-configuration networking, enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks. Bonjour uses industry standard IP protocols to allow devices to automatically discover each other without the need to enter IP addresses or configure DNS servers. Specifically, Bonjour enables automatic IP address assignment without a DHCP server, name to address translation without a DNS server, and service discovery without a directory server. Bonjour is an open protocol which Apple has submitted to the IETF as part of the ongoing standards-creation process. To learn more, check out the Bonjour Protocol Specifications which detail the technologies that make up Link-Local and Wide-Area Bonjour.
3. Install Bonjour for Windows on Your Home Server
We now need to install Bonjour on your home server. Firstly, copy the Bonjour installer to one your home server’s shared folders. Why not try the Software folder, as it’s an application – it doesn’t matter where you copy it to, as long as you know where it is.
Next, we need to install Bonjour on the server. To do so, we’ll use Remote Desktop Connection to work directly on the home server. On one of your PCs attached to the network, go to Start > Accessories > Remote Desktop Connection to bring up the login screen.
Type in the name of your home server, and your Administrator login details when prompted, and you’ll be magically transported to your home server’s desktop. Once you’re there, open up the shared folder you copied Bonjour to, and you should see it there waiting to be installed.
Double click on the Bonjour installer, and click through the wizard. You can leave the default settings in the wizard as you work through. Don’t worry that the app is called Bonjour Print Services – it includes the latest version of Bonjour that we’ll need for Air Video.
