The largely underestimated VLC Media player can act as a streaming server and is compatible with literally any A/V format. I had a dream of running a streaming movie show at office every friday. This is how it can be done.

What is needed:
1) VLC Player
2) The movie to be streamed
3) LAN or high speed internet connection

How to do it:

1. First open VLC player and go to
   File > Open File > Browse File
2. Select the movie file. Below this control, there is Stream/Save checkbox - select it.
3. Click on Stream/Save button to get the stream options pane. Choose the MMSH (mainly to make your movie compatible with Windows Media Player) and select port 8080 (You can select any open ports like 80 too. But make sure webservers, Skype etc are not running). Select video codec WMV1 or WMV2 and Audio codec mp3. Now, you are ready to rock and roll. Now your stream options pane should look like this:
   

Now click ok and again Ok to go back to the main VLC Window. Your movie is started. So, to watch this movie, you need to open the following URL in the Windows Media Player (use the File > Open URL option)

mms://<yourip>:8080



Thats it! Media Player will buffer the movie and start playing. Let me have your suggestions, problems etc etc.