Streaming/Playing Movies from external drive on TV?

luckymoneysaver

Hi

I would like to be able to play some of my film collection that i have on external hard drive on my tv.

The films on the drive are ones i own on dvd/bluray and ripped them so i could watch them without the need for constant disk loading/unloading.

I'd now like to extend the lack of disk loading to the tv.

Equipment: I have a Panasonic TX-P50VT20B 50' Plasma Full 3D HD. This is fully wireless and connected to my network. Also has usb ports but doesnt like .avi
Panasonic DMP-BDT300EG 3D Bluray Player, also fully wireless and connected.
Denon AVR-3311 Receiver with surround speakers.
Wireless laptop, with attached external 1Tb drive
BT Homehub 3.0
xBox 360 wireless connected (doesnt seem to recognise .avi)

All files are set as shared and available for use.

I've looked into the panasonic media server options. Ive also looked at Twonky, this seems to not be great quality.

My video files are both .avi and .mkv formats. Please let me know the cheapest options, not looking to spend any money, im sure there is an easy way, but ive just missed the obvious.

Please let me know what my options are. Many thanks

:beer:

edit: Is this the answer to all my problems. http://www.wdtvlive.com/products/wdtv_live#/highlights but i dont fancy on plugging in the external every time.

poppy10_2

You don't need the WD Live box - you have all the equipment you need.

The Blu-ray player you have is fully DLNA compliant and will play .avi files in both xvid/divx and h.264 codecs.

I use the free TVersity on my PC to serve the media files to my blu-ray player. It's lightweight, simple to use and works well.

Just install Tversity on the PC/laptop which has all your rips on it, and add the folder(s) which contain your rips to Tversity's library.
Then on your blu-ray player press Function>Network>Home Network (DLNA) and then select the Tversity server. From there you can simply browse through all your files and play them.

EDIT: alternatively if all your rips are on an external hard drive, could you not just plug that in to the USB port of the blu-ray player? It could read the files directly if the hard drive is formatted in FAT32 rather than NTFS

Apples2

Similar to TVersity.. I use Serviio to stream to my Samsung 50" tv.

aliEnRIK

Apples2 wrote: »

Similar to TVersity.. I use Serviio to stream to my Samsung 50" tv.

Is there a reason you use it over Tversity?

Apples2

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Is there a reason you use it over Tversity?

I didn't really give TVersity a chance tbh. Once my TV was clagged up via ethernet via my router I downloaded as many streaming apps as I could find.

The Samsung one was okay, but I found it a bit hit and miss. The TV simply didn't see the service running so I had to tweak it about.

TVersity had problems running my media.

For example, I download Lost s01e01 as an .avi
TVersity simply wouldn't run the file, no matter which option for Transcoding was selected.

Serviio places it in a folder called Lost, then a subfolder called Season 1
It then renames it as 01: Pilot and uses a single screengrab from within the episode as coverart (apologies for woeful picture quality )


There is no real front end GUI for the PC with Serviio, it is basic... but just works.

I'm sure TVersity would be just as good so I may go back to it and play around when I get bored but it wouldn't run my files as is, more needs to be done to get it to work.