One of the features I find lacking from Windows Media Player is the ability to easily share audio and video on one PC to a second PC in your home. Everything to get the job done effectively is a hack. On2Share is a plugin designed to make the process of sharing media files between computers easier. In theory, by installing On2Share on all the computers in your home, you can find the library of each machine and automatically create additional playlists with files listed on those machines. This works as long as you keep Windows Media Player open on all your machines all the time. If you close Windows Media Player on one PC, other PCs in the house no longer have access to the music and movies on that computer. With Service Pack 2 installed on any of your machines, if you use the Windows Firewall you’ll need to add UPnP and Windows Media Player to your exceptions lists in order to share the files between machines. Once everything is configured, playback works just like it normally does in Windows Media Player, with the exception of being restricted to the playlist designations created on the host machine. In my testing I was even able to play tracks downloaded from Napster as part of their $9.95/month service (not Napster To Go). While this isn’t a perfect solution for sharing media between multiple PCs it gets the job done with limited hassle, although the initial configuration may give you a few headaches. Compatible with Windows Media Player 9 and 10. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00]
On2Share
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