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Accessing external USB drive content over a network

Kantz -  
 Kantz -
Hello,

I have a TV that is not fully smart (it has a USB port that can read content from a USB stick or an external hard drive but does not have other connections such as Ethernet, Wifi, Bluetooth...).

To watch a movie, a series, my vacation photos, or to listen to music, I take a USB stick, plug it into the source device, usually a PC, transfer files to the USB stick, unplug the USB stick, plug it back into the TV and it works well, except that you have to prepare in advance because transferring an HD movie to a USB2.0 stick takes a lot of time! (yes, it's indeed USB2.0)
To solve this problem, and as an added bonus to back up my data, I use external hard drives, old 3.5'' computer hard drives recycled into external enclosures with power cables that I have organized so that each has a different type of content (movies, series, cartoons for kids, etc.), which makes it easy for me to know where to find what I want to watch.

Of course, my TV is in the living room on the ground floor and the PC is in a room upstairs, so carrying my external hard drives back and forth is not very practical and is likely to lead to damage sooner or later.

In a perfect world, I would be able to access in write mode

Has anyone ever faced this problem and found a solution?

Thank you

PS: since I know that nothing comes for free, I am willing to pay for a device that would solve my problem, but I won’t go as far as replacing my TV!

5 answers

Answer 1 / 5
Kantz
 
In a perfect world, I should be able to write to this disk from the PC located at a good distance, but via USB, I cannot.
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Papounet17000 Posted messages 26460 Registration date   Status Member Last intervention   9 895
 
Hello,

Which ISP are you with?

You can probably connect directly through the network.
The movies will stream from the PC to the ISP box and thus can be viewed on the TV.

The message below is pre-formatted, so depending on your ISP, we can see how to proceed. 

Install Plex media server on your PC, then in the Freebox menu, go to "Disque".
You will see Plex media server, and by selecting it, you will see all the movies you have on your PC and you will be able to watch them on the TV.

Of course, in Plex (double-click on the Plex icon in the notification area to open it in the browser), you need to add a movies library and select the folder path within it.

On your smartphone, you can also install Plex Android or Plex IOS to watch your personal videos on the TV or play your movies on the smartphone.

The advantage is that it goes through your network, so over wifi.
No cables to connect.

All you need to do is log in with an account created for this purpose on both the smartphone and the PC.




For those who do not have the Freebox or an Android box (the Plex application can be installed on it), they can use the ChromeCast.

Plex allows you to cast videos to the TV.

This software also allows you to convert videos to MP4 with very good image and sound quality.
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