Since I have a PC dedicated to the TV, I took the next logical step and hooked the very same PC up to the living room stereo. One cable at our local equivalence of “Radio Shack” solved that matter.

Enter stage left – VLC: A free media player that need no codecs (built-in) and a ton of features. One of the things it can do that caught my eye: An http interface, making it possible to control the player via any web browser within allowed IP range. Not all browsers can handle everything, but in essence: I have successfully used my mobile phone connected to my local network to adjust the volume…!

What I did: Media:Services Discovery:Shoutcast radio listings and thenI went into the playlist (Ctrl+L) and just clocked something. Seems to be a bug somewhere, because unless I do this, nothing show up elsewhere. In another posting I’ll describe how to prepare VLC for http before this actually works. The playlist contains a lot of radio stations – all free. So, I selected one and then tried controlling from another PC. Yep, works.

Note! Needs setup of http interface first.

Categories: VLC