Sorry if this doesn’t belong here, more than happy to be pointed in the right direction if it doesn’t.
I wanna do movie nights with friends where we watch movies together in the living room on my TV. I have a DVD player and VCR I got from the thrift shop as well as a few movies for both. However, I was thinking it would also be fun to expand the options available by downloading a bunch of public domain movies to play on the TV. Only issue is figuring how I’d work that all out.
The TV lacks any network connectivity features. While it has a USB slot, it can literally only detect pictures and set them up for slideshows. Even tried putting some video files on to test and it won’t detect at all. Also because my computer is a desktop, connecting it directly to the TV from the other room is a no-go.
Is there some sort of device that serves this kind of purpose? Like something I can download videos to, and then connect it to my TV in a similar sense you would a DVD or VCR and be able to choose the content on the device using a remote? I’d really appreciate the help and pointers if this is something that exists.
Onn tv puck from Walmart $19.99
Connect it to your TV, go to Play store, download Kodi.
Share folder of movies/tvshows on your pc
In Kodi, add smb source from your PC (guides online for this if you need it)
Done.
Edit: Block this thing from going online once you have installed kodi.
One question, do you know if the onn sends data back to Walmart? Not necessarily a deal breaker but important to know.
Unfortunately you should secure your home network with a managed firewall to be sure that any IOT devices don’t phone home. It sucks but that’s the only way I would recommend using a device you don’t fully trust.
More than likely it does, but I download what I need (Kodi) and then block the mac addy on my firewall. Nothing leaves my network unless I say it can.
Make/model of the TV would help. They often do support playing videos through USB, but are really limited in what movie file types it supports.
You could buy a cheap laptop or raspberry pi, connect that to the TV, and use VLC to play movies from your desktop (would have to make the folder with movies on your desktop network shareable).
The firmware explicitly states it’s for photos only, and I tried my luck using both mp4 and webm formats.
AppleTV, but it requires an Apple device to have the files on so you can AirPlay it to the TV.
Actually, the tv has to have HDMI. If it does, you can do the AppleTV box or just use a simple HDMI cord that hooks up to your computer
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I have a few devices that serve this purpose. The one I’d recommend is Kodi. This is a non-commercial media center program that has one purpose in life: play media files on the TV.
IIRC you can buy some commercial devices that come with Kodi pre-installed, with a USB port. You could also set up a shared network folder. I haven’t researched any of these.
What worked best for me was a raspberry pi with libreelec installed – an operating system that makes it easy to run Kodi. You can even control it by default with the TV’s remote control, just through the HDMI connection. Make sure you have a good quality power supply.
The other thing I’ve used is a steam link, but it is a little clunky to get it to play smoothly over the network.
