[tigerotor77w]

Did a few searches without definitive results, so I thought I'd create a new thread. Bear with me for my lack of knowledge.


I have an Apple Airport Extreme (Wireless N) router. My Sony EX700 can detect the wireless network, and as such, I've been able to stream content from Youtube (and Amazon VOD).


My computer (also a Mac; it runs OS X) is able to connect to the same wireless network.


To the router is connected a Lacie hard drive via a USB cable. I can connect to this hard drive wirelessly with my computer as a result and "stream" content from the hard drive to my computer. If I want to watch content on the hard drive on my TV, I have been plugging in the computer to the TV with an HDMI cable.


Is there a way for the TV to detect the hard drive, given that it's also on the network? (Yes, I've tried to see if it detects the hard drive -- it does not.) What would it take to get the TV to detect the hard drive and be able to play it? If there's no way for it to work right now with no modifications, would adding a Blu-Ray player with WiFi (another brand, say) allow this to work?


I suppose the corollary is to ask whether there's a way to stream media that's playing on my computer to the TV with my existing setup (i.e. without buying a NAS or similar).

 

[jhue]

AEBS supports SMB/CIFS and AFP file sharing protocols. Your TV does not. You could run a DLNA server on your Mac and serve up content to the TV that way. Your Mac would access the files on the shared disk, and the DLNA server would stream to the TV. AFAIK, codec support on the EX700 TVs is limited, so you may find your server transcoding your content to something the TV likes. If this does happen, you're probably better off offline transcoding your content to something the TV likes, as the quality will be much better than transcoding on the fly, and the CPU load will be low when streaming if not transcoding at the same time.


If you were to buy a Blu-Ray player that supported SMB/CIFS protocols, like an LG, you wouldn't need the Mac to stream to the TV. The Blu-Ray player could access the shared disk on the AEBS directly. The LG Blu-Ray players seem to have better codec/container support than the Sony TVs, though nothing compared to a dedicated media player.

 

[tigerotor77w]

Thanks for the reply! It helps a lot. As I understand it, then, the TV itself won't be able to see the hard drive (or its contents) because it doesn't support the file sharing protocol of my AEBS. A few questions...


1) How do I know which players (or TVs, for that matter) support SMB/CIFS protocols, and for that matter, how do I know that this is the protocol I'd be using (short of you telling me this)? As in, when I know I want to do this, how do I know what to google?


2) When you say "dedicated media player," what is that? A media server?

 

[jhue]



Quote:
Originally Posted by tigerotor77w /forum/post/19599976


1) How do I know which players (or TVs, for that matter) support SMB/CIFS protocols, and for that matter, how do I know that this is the protocol I'd be using (short of you telling me this)? As in, when I know I want to do this, how do I know what to google?

You're going to have to search and read the spec sheets yourself. For instance, to find out what the AEBS supports, I googled for "apple extreme base station supported file sharing protocols" and found this a few clicks later: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2426


2) When you say "dedicated media player," what is that? A media server?[/quote]


I mean a player, like a PopcornHour A-210, or Dune HD or any of the dozens of other devices discussed in this forum.

 

[tigerotor77w]

Thanks for your input on this whole thing -- your initial post got me interested in the LG BD-570, and after some reading and PMs with one owner, I decided to try it and see if the 570 would actually recognize my HFS+ formatted HD -- it did! It's working well on its first day.

I also posted a reply in the LG BD-570 owners' thread so that people might be able to search for this result rather than trial/error.

 

[Snyderman3000]

Have you been streaming wirelessly to the LG without stuttering? I'm interested in this player and am curious about its performance. What types of files do you have on the hard drive that you are streaming? Also, how far is the LG from the AEBS?

 

[tigerotor77w]

So far, I haven't had any stuttering issues except for the scenes in Planet Earth where there have been flocks of birds (I was watching "Pole to Pole"). So far, I have watched:


.mkv files ("Rubicon," "Top Gear," a football game)

.avi files ("Top Gear," "Planet Earth," "House")


Performance seems pretty decent. There may be a small loss in quality (compared to when I was streaming wirelessly to my computer and hooking up the computer to the TV), but at the distances I sit from the TV (15' from a 46" set), it's tough to tell if there's any difference at all. (And I could be imagining the difference.)


The router is less than 20' away from the BDP.