Home theater media streaming guru's please enter

glh_turbo22

Forum Member
Here is what I want to do:

I have an external hard drive connected to my wireless cloud router esentially giving me a NAS. I want to access my movies stored on the hard drive with my Samsung smart TV. All devices are connected by LAN.

Here is the components Im working with:
Samsung PN51E550D1FXZA SMART TV
D-Link DIR-636L Cloud Router
Western Digital My Book 3TB
Xbox 360

I want to stream the movies without having to have another computer always running. I just want to turn on the tv and access the files on the hardrive and watch a movie. All devices are DLNA compatible. I have tried a few things on my own but i'm beyond my realm of knowledge on this. There has to be a way to do this that im missing.
 
Here is what I want to do:

I have an external hard drive connected to my wireless cloud router esentially giving me a NAS. I want to access my movies stored on the hard drive with my Samsung smart TV. All devices are connected by LAN.

Here is the components Im working with:
Samsung PN51E550D1FXZA SMART TV
D-Link DIR-636L Cloud Router
Western Digital My Book 3TB
Xbox 360

I want to stream the movies without having to have another computer always running. I just want to turn on the tv and access the files on the hardrive and watch a movie. All devices are DLNA compatible. I have tried a few things on my own but i'm beyond my realm of knowledge on this. There has to be a way to do this that im missing.

I know its not wireless but I just plug my hard drive directly into the usb on my samsung smart tv bluray player so I would assume it should do the same on the tv
 
I have that option too but my router allows me to access my hard drive via the web and my ios device when i'm on the road and I just don't want to switch back and forth.
 
you will probably get more responses over at avsforum.com.

Have you looked at setting up xbmc ?
 
probably gonna have to run a very cheap low spec pc and run XBMC. you can look into roku and plex.
 
I didn't spend a ton of time researching your TV, but it appears to support DLNA through All Share Play. http://www.allshareplay.com/#

What that normally means is that from your PC/laptop/mobile, you can "send media to" other DLNA devices. So if you setup your PC and TV to have DLNA turned on and on the same broadcast network (e.g. they see each other over the LAN), then you can go into an app like Windows Media Center, browse to your movie/music... and then instead of playing it locally, you click a button in Media Center that says "Send To" --> TV. Essentially, All Share Play should make your TV a DLNA receiving device.

I don't see anything in the brochure for your TV that says it would natively allow you to connect to an SMB Windows file share on the network and open/play files. You'd need a more intelligent media streamer or HTPC to do that. I use a WD Live TV to do that... but you can also use an Apple TV, XBMC, a HTPC, etc.
 
The Raspberry Pi is a cool device, I have one. However, I personally don't like it for this unless you are trying to do something out of the ordinary like integrate it into a tv or another device. By the time you buy the Pi and the accessories you need and a suitable case you're already 2/3 of the way to a plug and play device that works well. With many devices out there at $100 I just don't think it's worth it for most people.
 
I grabbed a couple of these over the holidays when Newegg had em for $70: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815645003 They were a bargain for that price. They come pre-rooted, and you can install XBMC Linux or XBMC under Android. XBMC under Linux is much faster, and decodes 1080p, very easy to work with. My only gripe is the remote. If you have a smartphone, you can grab the XBMC controller native to iOs or Android and be off and running. The manufacturer of the XIOS DS is a developer for XBMC, so you know itll have the bleeding edge software.
 
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The Raspberry Pi is a cool device, I have one. However, I personally don't like it for this unless you are trying to do something out of the ordinary like integrate it into a tv or another device. By the time you buy the Pi and the accessories you need and a suitable case you're already 2/3 of the way to a plug and play device that works well. With many devices out there at $100 I just don't think it's worth it for most people.

Thats about it. I ran OpenElec on mine for a little bit. OpenElec is XBMC for embedded devices...you just install it to an SD card and go. While it did play videos smoothly, the interface could be a slideshow at times.
 
Yeah I tried Raspbmc on a SD card a while back and while it certainly was a good start it still left a little to be desired with the interface speed. Also couldn't seem to get it to find my media on the external hard drive I hooked up to it, but admittedly I'm not terribly familiar with XBMC or Linux so I didn't spend that much time trying to figure it out.
 
I grabbed a couple of these over the holidays when Newegg had em for $70: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815645003 They were a bargain for that price. They come pre-rooted, and you can install XBMC Linux or XBMC under Android. XBMC under Linux is much faster, and decodes 1080p, very easy to work with. My only gripe is the remote. If you have a smartphone, you can grab the XBMC controller native to iOs or Android and be off and running. The manufacturer of the XIOS DS is a developer for XBMC, so you know itll have the bleeding edge software.

I noticed it doesn't have an Ethernet port. How does it stream 1080p content? Does it buffer at all?
 
I noticed it doesn't have an Ethernet port. How does it stream 1080p content? Does it buffer at all?

It has an ethernet port in the pics and it lists 10/100 ethernet under the specs...

Yep, has an ethernet port. One of mine is hard wired, and thats the one I watch 1080p movies with...works great. I havent tried 1080p movies over wifi, but Im sure its possible. The one in my bedroom does 720p HDTV rips over wifi perfectly...no skips or stutters anywhere.
 
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