Streaming music to mac mini from windows 7

Sevs753

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I have a mac mini i no longer use and i want to use it to stream music to my stereo.
What i want to be able to do is leave the mac mini hooked into my receiver and leave it to sleep. It'll have no mouse, keyboard or monitor hooked up to it. I can wake it from sleep with the IR remote that came with it but i want to be able to stream music from my laptop (running windows 7). Being able to control the music from the laptop its streaming from is a definite plus. Ive tried using itunes home sharing but whenever it wakes up from sleep, i need a mouse and/or keyboard to start streaming music from my laptop.

Are there any other programs i can use or other ways to stream music from my laptop without buying anything else?
 
iTunes allows you to change the speaker to another system running iTunes. The icon to do this is at the bottom right of the iTunes window.
 
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was that feature added recently? Both the mac mini and my laptop are running itunes 9.x

if it isn't i can't find the button. All i have in the lower right it the two genius buttons.
 
Do you have a firewall running? Remote speakers has been a feature for awhile.
 
I forwarded the port that itunes help said to and theres still nothing. I'm going to try updating both computers versions of itunes and see if that works.

edit: nope, still no button. Both mac mini and laptop have the latest version of itunes, both have remote speakers turned on, i forwarded the port that itunes help said to forward and the button still wont appear. I can't think of what might be wrong unless i incorrectly forwarded the port.

edit2: heres a screenshot of the portforwarding setup. As you can see, i don't forward many (none) ports. The ip address is the one that ipconfig said that my computer had.
https://pic.armedcats.net/s/se/sevs753/2010/12/12/portforwarding.png
 
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I think the problem is that itunes is looking for an airport express, not another computer running itunes. I don't think apple will let you use another computer as remote speakers. Does anyone know of any other ways to stream music?

edit: nevermind. I looked around for other oprions and came across airfoil. I install the airfoil speakers app (basically the client side) on the mac mini and the main airfoil program on my laptop (server end) and the main program hijacks itunes and shows a list of all clients avalible to stream to. Works exaclty how i wanted.
 
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It looks like you are correct it only streams to airports and Apple TVs. I was just about to suggest airfoil. Good to know things worked out.
 
The only problem i have with it is that the client side won't let my mac idle out and go to sleep. but that's a simple fix by using the apple remote to force it to sleep when im done listening to music
 
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