Hello All,

I have a dedicated server from which I stream movies.The only issue I am having is that users can enter the url of the website and the movie in IDM and download a movie.Example...www.mywebsite.com/Movie .I only want the movies to be streamed, by the player I use on the site and users not to be able to download.

I use centos 5,apache server.I am not sure if htaccess, is the solution to my issue here.Please advise if possible.

Thank you

Hi there,

... which is a "must", in my own user's opinion. I wouldn't visit any media site a second time if it doesn't allow me to download the full media files. That's simply inacceptable.

Then you've got to put the media files in a directory that isn't accessible via HTTP (outside the document root or blocked with a "Deny from" directive), an set up a dedicated streaming server. However, using an adequate player on the client side, you can always save the stream while playing. Videolan does that easily, for example. And just in case you're asking: No, you can't force your visitors to use a particular player - unless you use a non-standard streaming protocol and supply the player yourself. But then you have to have it available for a decent number of different platforms (Windows, Linux, iPad, Android, ...).

But again: Leave it like it is, for the sake of convenience.

[X] Doc CPU

well to answer your first reply.Alot of sites just stream videos and alot of people just want to watch the videos over the internet and not download them.Streaming is also clearly less expensive that downloading especially when the directory is public and there is no limitiations set in place to monitor speed of downloads and file size download ability.so not because you wouldnt visit a site twice means that there are not people out there who just look for streaming sites.


Secondly I cannot make the site inaccessible to http, because the divx player I use to stream the videos wouldnt be able to play it.So I neeed a another solution if any.

Thank you very much for replying though.

Hi there,

yes, I know - youtube is probably the most famous one; in Germany, there are myvideo.de, clipfish.de and maxdome.de (an internet-TV site). All of them just offer streaming and no full download. And that's why they're just bullshit from my point of view.

Then there isn't any solution for your problem. If the player can access the media files via HTTP, then any browser or download manager can. That's why I suggested you to think about a real streaming server. Not that I'd favor that solution, but it would get pretty close to what you want.

[X] Doc CPU

ah ok , thank you.I guess by a real streaming server you mean by using some software to stream the files.Do you know of any I can research ? Because my research says apache and another software that is really not what I am looking for, because I would still like the maintain the ability to embedd any player within my site and stream from the location where the movie files are.

Thank you