Question: I am an absolute beginner with this. I installed Wowza and wanted to play VOD. The test works, the sample.mp4 plays. However when I try what looks like the same URL shown in the test player, which in my case is: 

<http://192.168.5.76:1935/voddec8/mp4:sample.mp4/manifest.f4m>

I get the contents of the manifest. When I try to remove the manifest.f4m so that the URL is just:

<http://192.168.5.76:1935/voddec8/mp4:sample.mp4>

EDIT: Could it be that I need to be in a player, not a browser?

I just get info about the Wowza server:

Wowza Streaming Engine 4 Trial Edition (Expires: Jun 07, 2016) 4.3.0 build16025

What am I doing wrong?

Answer: 
if you want to deliver the vod as progressive method , you can try nimble streamer (wmspanel.com)
which will gives you additional security for progressive delivery method, and if this is for web delivery i prefer to deliver using hls method (.m3u8) which is the best method to avoid your sever bandwidth also.
If you have installed wowza on local system, the URL pattern will be your IP address. You can switch wowza to listen on any port (should be open port).
Ex: rtmp://10.136.15.1:1935/vod/mp4:bunny.mp4

Instead of running it under 1935, you can switch it to listen on port:80.
You can try running your vod video in VLC player, as highlighted below.

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cvoGD.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cvoGD.png)

Once this is running, you can embed it in your application using open source media player (strobe player) : <http://matbury.com/strobe/>