The VideoLAN Forums

I am looking to provide a server on my local network that offers a selection of streams (mp4 or rtsp) and would like to make it so that both the stream list and streams are accessible via VLC. I want to avoid DLNA, since the libraries tend to be closed source and aren't available to many open source projects in an easy to consume form.

Is there any recommended set of technologies for this, without needing to write my own plugin? Maybe something using mDNS (aka Bonjour) and HTTP/JSON?