I've been searching Google for hours now. That's why I posted a
message here. I was hoping somebody's done this lots of times and can
tell me real quick how to do it the easy way.
From what I read, I don't want to "stream" the video, I just want to
open a file with the Windows default program for that type of file.
then just point them to the file, that's all there is to it.
Beyond that it's up to the client's settings if they want to open it or not,
you can't force it.
Redirecting the file will download the entire thing to the client machine.
If you want to retain control of your clip, both in security and copyright,
and have your server better manage its bandwidth and memory, consider
streaming it.