Is A Media Player Be What I Need For My Purposes?

[eon90210]

Hello. I am trying to find out if a media player is what I need for my purposes. Please, let me explain what kind of setup I want. I have an external hard drive that is connected to my computer in the computer room. I have a television in another room. I want to be able to play the .avi's and divx's on the television while the data is on the external hard drive in the other room. I don't want to bring the external into the living room. I also want to be able to watch it on the TV while the computer in the other room is OFF and only the external hard drive is powered on. It has a dedicated AC adapter. I currently have a wifi router, a TP-Link WR-1043ND which has a USB port.

Last night, I connected the external hard drive to the router and I was able to access the external on my seperate laptop via network. I could watch movies on the laptop which data is on the external hard drive. This is all while the main computer is off. I am not sure if a media player would work because the way I accessed the external was by click, in Win7, My Computer, then Network, then Network Infrastructure and in there i right clicked it and opened an explorer window with an IP address like "file://192.165.xx.x" and that way I could access the external hard drive files. Or I could press start, then in the Run dialog, I could also put in "file://192.165.xx.x" etc. It was not under a hard drive designation like C: or D:.

I hope that isn't too confusing. Will a media player be able to access the external hard drive even though there isn't like a C: or D: designation but rather a file://192.165.xx.xx ip address?

Is there any other setup other than this that you can reccomend? I'm thinking I could connect a wire connecting the router and the media player. Or better to connect the USB 2.0 cord to the media player via a really really long usb cord? Or how else can I connect the external hard drive to the media player with the computer off?

I am also wondering if I will be able to steam over the wifi network like 720p or 1080p video smoothly. If not, I could connect the external hard drive to the media player with I think I could use a really really long USB cord...? Is that ideal? For now I only will be watching DVD quality avi's but wondering this for future upgradeability.

Lots of questions I have, hopefully you can shed some light.

Thanks.

[lostintransit]

Hello. I am trying to find out if a media player is what I need for my purposes. Please, let me explain what kind of setup I want. I have an external hard drive that is connected to my computer in the computer room. I have a television in another room. I want to be able to play the .avi's and divx's on the television while the data is on the external hard drive in the other room. I don't want to bring the external into the living room. I also want to be able to watch it on the TV while the computer in the other room is OFF and only the external hard drive is powered on. It has a dedicated AC adapter. I currently have a wifi router, a TP-Link WR-1043ND which has a USB port.

Last night, I connected the external hard drive to the router and I was able to access the external on my seperate laptop via network. I could watch movies on the laptop which data is on the external hard drive. This is all while the main computer is off. I am not sure if a media player would work because the way I accessed the external was by click, in Win7, My Computer, then Network, then Network Infrastructure and in there i right clicked it and opened an explorer window with an IP address like "file://192.165.xx.x" and that way I could access the external hard drive files. Or I could press start, then in the Run dialog, I could also put in "file://192.165.xx.x" etc. It was not under a hard drive designation like C: or D:.

I hope that isn't too confusing. Will a media player be able to access the external hard drive even though there isn't like a C: or D: designation but rather a file://192.165.xx.xx ip address?

Is there any other setup other than this that you can reccomend? I'm thinking I could connect a wire connecting the router and the media player. Or better to connect the USB 2.0 cord to the media player via a really really long usb cord? Or how else can I connect the external hard drive to the media player with the computer off?

I am also wondering if I will be able to steam over the wifi network like 720p or 1080p video smoothly. If not, I could connect the external hard drive to the media player with I think I could use a really really long USB cord...? Is that ideal? For now I only will be watching DVD quality avi's but wondering this for future upgradeability.

Lots of questions I have, hopefully you can shed some light.

Thanks.

used a wired ethernet where possible, you would probably have problems playing 1080p over wireless, dvd quality would be fine on wifi
from googling your routers info I would say you should be able to see the network attached drive ok on a media player like the wdtv. If you had to install some software on your computer for it to connect to it then it would be different.

[JamesA1]

To answer your specific question:

The external hard drive connected to your router can be accessed as a network drive by your windows desktop and laptop computers, but not all media players can do that. It's more common for media players to use DLNA, which requires your server (in your case the router) to be running DLNA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLNA) server software. Your router does not have a built-in DLNA server, so you would have to choose a media player that supports network drive access to do what you want, such as the WDTV.

[doduv2]

Yes, for your purposes, a media player is a good solution.

But I would strongly suggest to hook the hard drive to your media player.

The best scenario would be a media player in the living room, a usb drive attached to it. The media player should be wired by Ethernet to your router (Wifi can be a pain if you stream HD video or move large files, SD is fine for Wireless).

With that setup, any device on your network (computer, mobile phone, etc.) will eventually be able to see and use the files on the media player (the usb drive attache dto it). For instructions, you should search how to get a samba share or SMB share set up on your devices (phone, computer). Really easyly done.

With that type of setup, you could look at the WDTV (that's what I use), a Pivos, a Patriot box office (even though it's kinda old now), and maybe a Boxee (don't know if it shares by default).

[JasonCao]

patriot box office media player is your solution. its pretty awsome, can play 99.9% of file format out there

[will888]

I have a similar solution using a PBO and WD live. Both can see the hard drive connect to the router.