I've got a WCF service that stories media files and returns them to consuming applications in the form of a Stream object. The issue arises when the consuming application wants to stream the media using MediaElement. As you all know, MediaElement doesn't accept Stream objects.
Can I get around this by using a VLC or WMP ActiveX control? Would either of these two controls allow me to play streaming media?
Both of those two activex controls support various types of streaming media, but neither will allow you to use a C# Stream object, which is a managed object. Niether of those two activex controls use any managed code at all, as far as I am aware; it is possible that WMP may, but it wouldn't be exposed via the COM interface in any case.
If memory serves, I think you can provide a MediaElement with individual frames (even H.264 frames), so you could possibly extract the stream yourself and feed it into the MediaObject.