I have my home videos and pictures on a smb network share and I'd like to watch them from my nexus player. What are some of the ways I can do this? I'd rather not cast if possible (would like a native app)
VLC has a network option but it doesn't seem to work yet. Is there something like Gallery for Android TV that can read from the network?
Google should really make google photos android tv compatible. Casting isn't the best experience for photos and very short videos.
I use Kodi for everything.. Never had any issues to access the data from my NAS . Play any video you throw at it too.. It supports pictures too but never tried it so im not sure of it's good or what it looks like
There is a github project that's good for this: Amphitheatre. It lets you add smb sources for videos so you can play them on the TV.
It's currently only as a project at http://github.com/fleker/amphitheatre but I do plan on releasing an official version of the app at some point.
It won't have photo support though. ES File Explorer has done a fine job of browsing though.
kodi is probably the best for this
For photos I've been casting my tablet's screen with Google Photos on it.
On the one hand it's convenient since you can easilly zoom into pictures much more easily than with a remote.
On the other hand it sucks since the connection sometimes lags and the tablet tends to get really warm and will start dropping the connection after about 15 minutes of use (I believe due to the heat protection).
Honestly I'm just waiting for Google to get off their ass and release a TV version of their Photos app.
The tablet is a Nexus 9, if anyone's curious.
The best way I've found over a home network is Plex .
Set up the server on your computer and the client on your Android TV. Be sure to select the correct video type(home movie/ hollywood production) to avoid getting incorrect meta data.
Tell us how you do.