Connecting PC to receiver via WIFI to stream media?

[Dragonspirit76]

Hello good people!

I've been agonizing over this for some time now and though it seems evident I cant figure out whether this will work or not. Please help!

I want to push/stream media sitting on my PC to my AV receiver. What equipment do I need to do that? I am looking to swap in a new receiver with ethernet/wifi connectivity... will that be enough? The idea is to avoid running two hdmi cables across the whole living room - from the pc to the receiver and back from receiver to projector (pc and projector are close to each other). Would i need a gadget such as a media player between the pc and the receiver to decode media files from the PC? If so, ideally such a media player should have an easy and responsive explorer-like menu, which I can easily navigate to find relevant content on my PC. Otherwise, even better, I'd prefer to just launch files on my pc and have the receiver play them (sound and pictures)... what software would I need for this?

All advice will be much appreciated. I tried everything I could think of so far and cant figure out what will work... thankls in advance!!!

K

 

[kanewolf]

You would need a media player of some kind. Smart TVs have them built in. A projector would not. You would need a ROKU or something. Be careful in choosing your media player, some support local file access and some expect ALL content to be cloud based. Amazon Fire TV originally had limited support for local playback.

There are two basic ways a media player accesses files. Either through a network shared folder or DLNA server -- https/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance

Depending on the player, if you go through shared folder then it is up to you to organize the folders. If you use a DLNA server then the meta-data is available to the player (album art for MP3s for example) and you use the meta-data to navigate like on an iPod.

 

[americanaudiophile]

Since you don't have the AV receiver yet you should be able to find one that has DLNA built in.
The downside is that it may not support the file types that you want to stream to it. A media box (such a Roku, Android TV etc) would play more file types and be more upgradeable.