newbie guide to streaming

[skuse]

Hi all,
Spent quite a bit of time reading and playing around with vlc this weekend. What I am trying to do is stream video from a server (which I was able to do) that allows the client to pause/ff/rew/etc. (which I was not able to do). I tried RTP/HTTP/RTSP with no luck. I was using mpeg4 based video clips. I even used vlc and ffmpeg to transcode to different formats thinking that may help but no joy. Can someone point me to a real working example of a client/server setup that allows the client to control the video? from what I have read this should be possible. Is there a specific type of protocol/format that is required?

thanx in advance