The idea is to start a video stream from one computer and watch it on another with the ability to start/stop the stream. I think I could do this with VLC but i haven't been able to figure out how. I've tried the following: (From the official forum) Stream with RTSP and RTP: on the server, run: % vlc -vvv input_stream --sout '#rtp{dst=192.168.0.12,port=1234,sdp=rtsp://server.example.org:8080/test.sdp}' on the client(s), run: % vlc rtsp://server.example.org:8080/test.sdp But this doesn't give me the ability to start/stop the stream from the client. According to the VLC release note something called "Trick play" was added in version 1.0. This seems to be what I'm looking for but i can't find any documentation that descibes how to use it.