How to stream Windows Media Player content from a folder on a network share

Media Sharing will only share local content in the library. Any UNC paths that have been added to the library will not be visible to the UPnP Media Client. For example I have a Dlink NAS at my home. While it worked great at first streaming media to my Xbox, one day the Xbox could no longer see any media files it could stream! I figured since I could see my Intel i7 box on the network I’d just point to the Dlink at the file level and tell Media Player to do the stream sharing.

By default you can only stream local content. So after a few months I finally figured out how to stream file through Media player from a network share.

If you want to share files in a monitored folder that is located on another computer, like for example, a folder on a network share, the remote folder must have the appropriate Windows access permissions assigned to it.

Next you will have to make a new Registry entry:

To do so, open regedit and navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\PREFERENCES\HME 
 
In right panel create a new DWORD called EnableRemoteContentSharing 

Set its value to 1. 

This will enable sharing of media from a network location. 
Typically when adding network locations to a library, they must normally either be indexed (made available offline). Windows Media Player maintains its own database, and hence it is able to add non-indexed locations to a library. 
Do note the computer that contains the library should have remote content sharing enabled. 
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