Streaming .avi in Windows Server 2003?

So I'm using windows media services in win server 2003 to stream videos to other computers on my network,but for some reason when I try to stream .avi files the server does not seem to recognize these file types in the publishing directory. I'm guessing this is because this file type is not supported cause I can stream any Microsoft (ie.. .wmv,.wma,.AsF) file type just fine.Is there some codec pack I can download to make this work? Is it even possible to stream .avi file types in server 2003?

 

Dont want to offer any bad advice about this product as I know little of it, there may be a plugin that could be of some help...

I could reccommend VLC media player designed with network streaming in mind.
There are not too many file formats that it doesnt run... if it doesnt run in most of my other playback apps, I default back to VLC, has very low overheads and a rather clean but basic interface. Best of all its free.

Note, I am unsure if this is supported by your media services. verify this Works great on XP pro sp3 for small work groups.

G. luck

 

I would just use VLC but isn't that mainly just for streaming? I guess I wasn't too specific on what I was trying to do with my media server.I have it setup as a video on demand service, where all my videos are loaded onto the servers hardrive in a shared directory accessible either through my home netowrk or the internet. I want to be able to just type in a url whenever I want to watch a movie without being next to my computer so I can access these movies from any location at any time as long as my server is up. I have it setup like this and it works fine except I can only share and veiw .wmv videos. I thought it might just be that I don't have the proper codecs installed and went ahead and installed k lite codec pack on the server to no avail. I know I can just convert the videos from .avi to .wmv but thats too much off a hasle seeing as I have about 1tb worth of videos I would have to do that to. Is their anyway to get around M$'s proprietary file type crap or am I just stuck using their crap? Btw is Vlc capable of doing all of what I want to do,or is it only capable of streaming? Thanks for the help

 

Hi ya

Please see, http://www.vlc.com/ for further info to see if this is o.k for you.

L8r:wave

 

Does anybody else have any suggestions?