Software: Broadcast content through lan

Hey all,

I've looked for something like this for years but haven't been able to find what I want. I had a computer set up with Windows server 2003 many years ago running media services that was running stations playing files that were essentially continuous play lists I could tune into for video and audio from any computer on the network (not on demand, would keep playing with no users connected, that's where I'm having an issue).

Im looking to repeat this so I can have basically my own streams at home of things running all the time of random media that are always being broadcast on the lan playing things. Does anyone know of software that can do this?

 

Probably the same way I would have done it 20 years ago - Icecast. I'm not sure what the "right" tool these days would be to feed it a playlist of source videos but I'm sure something would turn up if you started looking.

 

I've been looking for quite some time and nothing really works. Icecast is something that requires actual additional software that does the work, a lot of which other broadcasting software I've already looked at have also mentioned before and have since been discontinued. It works with VLC but only for transcoding a single type of file - AVI/MKV/MP4 etc so if anything else is in the playlist it just dies and realistically I actually haven't managed to get icecast working with VLC itself only VLC broadcasting on its own.

I really don't understand how this is such an issue and no one has any ideas, I've come across people asking the question countless times over the years but no answers, especially seeing as everyone has moved onto on demand streaming which is the complete opposite of what I'm after.

 

what's the receiving device?

DLNA will play a playlist

its just dlna effective support is all over the shop in many devices

 

Just different pcs, would be able to install whatever software if I could find something that would actually do the job for me that I want but nothing seems to actually keep the playlist running when I'm no longer streaming on demand. Everything I've found thus far has required multiple versions of out-of-date software that are no longer supported, or simply they don't work for what I want it to do. VLC is the closest I have found but it's extremely selective with what it wants to do and very temperamental.

I do have my main PC set up running somewhat DNLA (Universal Media Server) for my PS4, but it doesn't seem to do what I want. Unless you know of a way for it to play the playlist without it being on demand then I'm all ears.

 

NDI Tools bonus it does video too. It's free.