Synchronizing media viewing across the Internet?

[giraffe]

One of the most useful and interesting things I do with my online tutor is view a television program together and discuss it as we go along, stopping and starting constantly. Sometimes she shares her desktop through Skype. When it works, it works pretty well, but often there's not enough bandwidth and the quality becomes unusable or fails completely. Other times we use a video sharing site like Youkou and one person will tell the other when to start and stop but this is a little awkward and hard to coordinate well.

I'm wondering if anyone has heard of an app/service/technique for simultaneously controling the media on a website or a file in two places at the same time. In other words, one of us could click 'start' and 'stop' and it would control the browser or media player in both desktops?

[renshanrenhai]

I have an idea. But this requires you tutor do more.

You can ask your tutor download the video clip and then you watch together with the help of remote control tool on skype.

This can avoid buffering online video.

[jbradfor]

vlc allows remote control of start/stop as well. Here is one example: http://maketecheasier.com/remote-control-vlc-with-android-phone/2010/08/06

That method, however, requires the direct IP address of your computer; if you are behind a firewall / NAT, it won't work. Technically there should be a way you can get it working behind a NAT, but I don't know if anyone has written it yet.

[Silent]

If I look at the instructions it should be easy to get it working behind a NAT

Instead of the IP adress of your computer you should use the IP adress you use at the internet.

For security reasons I would change 8080 to something 'random' (between 1024 and 65535)

Then you have to configure the NAT/Firewall to let the traffic through. You have to map the incoming port (chosen random number) to the IP adress and port 8080 of the pc.

How exactly to map the port depends on the NAT/Firewall so check the manual. Usually it's very simple, just typing the numbers in a table.