Can someone please point me to a tutorial on how to stream DVD/VCD/DivX/Xvid and MP3 data from a computer to a PDA. To start with I would like to stream music through my home network only.

thanks in advance

The best streaming app that I've seen (and by some distance) is Slim Server by Slim Devices.

Not only does it allow you to stream different bit rates to different devices (I can choose to stream 128Kb/s to my PDA or 320Kb/s to my desktop) it also has a web server to allow you to control your playlists etc.

http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_features.html

I haven't seen a tutorial for it but it's pretty clean and simple. A remarkable streaming music app.

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anything for the video?

Windows Media Encoder seems to be the best out there for video. Or at least the best for the price (free).

There are some online tutorials, here and then google for "stream windows media encoder" and I'm sure you'll find something. I don't have anything linked off hand.

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you can use orb. www.orb.com its free to use and works really great for me.

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I find orb to run too slow. But what ever works best for you...
Anyway, I use WME and have no problems.

   

Orb connects through the Internet so that may be why there may be problems with speed at times.

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Tried orb, it works great for all types media but is really too slow for any real streaming.
I am looking for something that will stream divx,svid,dvd and mp3 over my home network. if possible i would like to do this without any encoding. I have already got a decent collection of movies on xvid and divx formats.
is there something apart from wme that will do the job?

You can also try VideoLAN. It works well streaming to Betaplayer/TCPMP.

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I might be missing something, but can't you just map your network shares and navigate to them in TCPMP and play the file(s) directly?

That's how I do it.

That's not streaming, it's just cramming the file down the network in a random fashion. It works in some situations but not others.

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It is indeed streaming. Streaming does not implicitly mean rate control via (re)encoding or otherwise, it simply suggests moving data quickly enough for it to be used in real time. It works in MANY situations with the Axim, such as just about any compressed music file (as the OP stated) and for video of moderate bitrates, dependent, of course, on your wireless bandwidth. Best of all, you get full access to the files as they are, i.e. you can access them randomly rather than being beholden to the broadcast from your streaming server.

In other words, why complicate things? There is definitely no need to use a front-end for streaming audio to your Axim. About the only thing I see in the OP's original list that would require pre-compression is DVD video, but I doubt you would be able to compress on the fly quickly enough to make it work.

My suggestion to the OP is to just try it, you'll probably get all your music and I would guesstimate video up to 2-3 Mbits/sec or so (average).

I am assuming the OP meant a wireless connection to his home network, if wired, you could probably directly stream any video your Axim could play.

True - it's a loose definition and I guess you COULD interpret that as streaming. But if you search for "streaming" on here you'll find a fair number of posts of people trying to cram their data over the network with no understanding of how and why it doesn't work. This is because they're just doing it in a random fashion with no enforced rate control and the results are choppy audio/video etc.

It can work in many cases with audio, like you say, but with video it's really a numbers game and you're reliant on the original encoding being a reasonable rate.

There are ways to re-encode DVD and stream it in near-live methods. And when streaming audio you're only limited to the "broadcast" style audio stream if that is a function of the application that is doing the streaming.

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Well not to be too nitpicky, but that is in fact streaming by the exact definition -- even if the video ends up choppy (that would be poor quality streaming but streaming nonetheless). The natural transfer of data over a network this way is via packets that can be used immediately as quickly as they come ... this is what streaming is AFAIK.

Software rate control is either a tangential issue or sub-issue, depending on how you look at it. Rate is controlled by hardware in a normal network transfer.

In any event I re-iterate that the OP should try simply accessing the network shares directly before trying any other methods.