Is this media setup possible with a Shield TV?

by wildfig

Hi all,

I'm looking to update my media layout at home. I'm looking for a silent setup that will play my local files. I have a wife and a daughter so it needs to be simple. I have a modest budget. I'm currently using Plex on an Amazon Fire Stick which talks my to PC in the same room which drives me crazy because it is a loud brute. It'll be playing mostly large files, 10/15gb movies and TV files between 1 - 3gb.

YouTube and Twitch are also watched a fair bit here.

I have the idea of purchasing an Nvidia Shield TV and a 1TB External HDD plugged into the back of it, running Kodi which I am fluent in setting up and using. I would like to then point my home PC to the external HDD on the network and have it running so that my files are automatically copied to the HDD attached to the Shield when acquired. Again, I am fluent in how to do this locally, just have to tweak it to run over my home wired network. The PC would do all the heavy duty stuff when it is on, as between all my family and I, it is running three or four hours a day, leaving me to be able to watch my files from the HDD with the PC off.

Does this seem feasible?

mofirouz

People missed out the point which is you don't want to run the PC 24/7 as it is very loud.

The answer to your request is yes. You can even automate the copy procedure to copy the downloaded files from your PC.

Have a look at Syncthing. It has native Android TV support.

mr_yuk

Is there a reason you don't just want to keep your PC on and use it as a Plex server? The ShieldTV runs Plex just fine and will stream all your media over the network.

If you need to have the PC off then this setup will most likely require a NAS. An external drive connected to the ShieldTV will not be accessible from the PC (unless you are willing to do some programming). So it won't be easy to set it up to sync files to a USB HDD.

If you use a NAS, though, both the PC and ShieldTV can access it over the network. NAS are convenient but they cost considerably more than an external HDD or adding disks to a PC.

bradowatson

This is pretty similar to my setup. I prefer Kodi over Plex so I have a 2 TB HDD attached to my Shield TV. I use SambaDroid to copy files to the external HDD over the network, but I'm only able to copy files up to 2 GB. Anything over that size has to go through ftp or sneakernet ever since 3.0 update to the Shield.

With SambaDroid automated file copying is simple because it's just smb protocol.

I used to have an htpc in the living room, but I've made the Shield our primary media device. With the HDHomeRun prime and live TV it can literally do everything we want. I highly recommend it.

BradB111

Im not 100% sure that will work unless you can use ES file explorers FTP server on the shield TV to access the external drive, if you can (dont see why you wouldn't pick up the external drive as being listed under ftp connection on your pc though)

I have mine set up where i have a small, cheap, low powered pc (pipo x8) that runs 24/7 and is fan-less (so no noise) that has a shared external HDD and i can access that over windows share from my main pc and i can also access it over then network using kodi. ill plug in a usb drive into my shield TV now and see if i can access it via ftp using ES file explorer.

EDIT: unfortunately it did not work but there may be another way round this that I'm not aware of

revolvercube

I've been tempted to try something like this but still use Plex server for all my media, I was thinking of seeing if it's possible to sideload something like bit torrent sync and just share between the PC and shield .

I think one of the bigger hurdles would be androidTV forcing services to sleep/hibernative which might cause if to drop out periodically the reason I say this I tried some vpns a while ago and they would terminate when in the background for a bit

KagitinganSt

Does this help ? https://plus.google.com/+IsraelOliverJr414515/posts/SLx8kcmrQAc?iem=4&gpawv=1&hl=en-US

Also, would an NAS work

strider2112

Maybe I didn't quite understand the question, will you be using Kodi? Kodi has the capability to add network drives stock. So you can have your network attached storage (your PC in this case), with the media files on it, and be able to access it all from Kodi. It can even treat the remote location as part of your library and blend it with local files.

Kodi can do FTP, sFTP, or even SMB (which I mostly used). I did this with my shield portable so I can watch my media centre tv/movies anywhere in the house.

Plex I don't know

Edit: just ignore me -.-

shatheid

I had the same idea, but I'm not sure that you can write to the external drive that is connected to the Shield.

I see the FTP thing mentioned, but I believe that is only to write to the Shield itself...unless that changed with Marshmallow release.

What I'm working towards now is to get a router with USB 3.0 and to plug the HDD into it, and have the Shield play from there. That way you can add to it over the network.

bradowatson

Another option for hosting your files without a PC running that hasn't been mentioned is attaching an external HDD to your router. No need to purchase a NAS when most modern routers have USB ports for external drives. The file sharing is simple and accessible from Kodi.