Accessing NAS from smart tv

[Jamok23]

Hey guys im moving house tomorrow and i had an idea to watch all my movies from my nas on my smart tv. Up until now my pc has been in the living room, so i just connected them with hdmi, but now i have gotten an office i was curious if this would work.

I have searched online and all the posts talk about an actual NAS and a specific brand of tv. My nas is a 3.5" hdd plugged into my router via usb to sata adapter, nothing fancy. and my tv is a hitachi. Im not going to pretend that i know anything about networking or setting it up. I just seen a video that said this works as a cheap alternative for a proper nas, and im happy enough with it. I know that it has to be a wired connection from the router to the tv, and im using powerline adapters to achieve that. But i dont want to go out and spend £30-£50 on decent powerline adapters if it doesnt work.

What do you guys think? Or is it different for every brand of tv whether it will work or not.

TV: Hitachi 50hyt62u
HDD: WD Cavier Bleu 1Tb
Router: BT Home Hub 4 (upgrading to a TP-Link TD-W8980 N600 soon)
Poweline Adapters: TP-Link AV500

Thanks guys

 

[jsmithepa]

Not going to work, still need the PC (middle man true smart) in between.

"Smart" TVs are far from being smart.

How does your PC currently talk to the NAS? did you have to install a driver? if yes, then the TV also needs a similar driver and you are not going to find it.

If no driver needed then PC is using a built-in protocol like SAMBA to talk to the NAS, and I bet, again, your TV doesn't talk SAMBA.

Your only hope is that the router talks DLNA. Smart (bleeew) TVs at least talk DLNA. While multi-hundreds$$ honest-to-God NAS have DLNA, I wager, consult the manual if you must, the router doesn't talk DLNA.

 

[Jamok23]

Hey jsmithepa, thank you for replying so quickly. I havent set up my nas yet, i currently have the hardrive in my pc storing movies, music and pictures. i figured that it was just a simple plug and play. plug the hardrive into the back of the router and access it from every pc, (and possibly smart tvs. Do you think it would be worth it to just connect the hdd straight to the tv as a mass storage device?

 

[jsmithepa]

Do you think it would be worth it to just connect the hdd straight to the tv as a mass storage device?

Try.

It will be READ only. The TV may insist that the HD be formatted a specific way, consult TV manual. Only NTFS or eFAT allows large modern video files. FAT32 limits to 4 gig files. TV will be limited to what type of video file will play, while with a PC, all you have to do is to load the correct codec.

A person here complained unintentionally he hit a sequence of buttons and the TV formatted his HD while plugged in, erasing everything, so be aware.

 

[Jamok23]

so you think it would be worth while just setting up a normal nas, and buying something like a gigabyte brix as a system to pull from it? a bit more money, but seems like the easiest choice.

 

[jsmithepa]

The only EASY way to do this is to hire an AV consultant to buy the pieces for you and configure (not trivial), then just hand you the remote. Am serious.

If you are going the DLNA route, I strongly suggest you test it out first, I personally hate it and consider it not a serious way to build an AV library. DLNA is really entry stuff to wet you appetite and that's it. How big do you project your AV library to be? in a couple of years, do you see that library size increase many folds from what you currently have? What's your budget? Is this a one-user thing or to be used by the whole family?

You can test DLNA by running a DLNA server on your current PC, I used Serviio in the past, was trialware when I used it.

I have a 5TB AV library with about 30 Bluray, 50 DVD, hundreds of TV recordings. DLNA would chock on that. Am running Windows Media Center (but there are others) on a dedicated HTPC (doesn't have to be powerful) permanently hooked up to my big screen TV and gets the media via a NAS. Actually I have a second HTPC in the bedroom accessing the same.

This thread should really on the Home Theater forum.