You still have a blockbuster membership? Jesus Christ. DVD? Rip those fuckers to mkv.

Use handbrake or something else to rip it to a NAS or shared drive on a PC. DVD and Blu-ray playback, legally, requires a license fee to the associated technology group. So even if the device could see the drive it woudn't be able to decode it and play it back without the requisite software and associated license.

I use MakeMKV to rip them to a video file, put on my NAS then point Plex at that.

have seen a post where someone hooked up his pc bluray player by using share option in network storage https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/836529/shield-tv/blu-ray-disk-support/2/ (ClausG76 post), another option would be to create a digital image (iso) or MKV Remux and play it with kodi without any quality loss, it will be heavy files but play well and without any noise (some bluray player are really noisy) Edit: there also someone that claims that it works https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=63104740&postcount=12

I've looked into it in the past. I don't think it's possible.

Not possible.

Some Samsung external DVD drives have a usb storage option that will present a disc as basically a USB stick with data on it. So it would only be able to read DVDs you copied or made yourself, but not original DRM protected discs (and Android limits the readable file size to 4gb or less on the disc). I backup my video files (mkv, h264 and 5) to DVD and then play them on the shield through the DVD drive. Works perfectly and saves some space until I can put together a NAS with a shit ton of storage.

Not perfect but yes you can. For fun I tried sharing my blu-ray drive from my windows system. Then went into Kodi and added the share as a video source and was able to watch DVDs. I never got it to auto-play a DVD. I always had to go into the video files and start them individually. It's not the best solution. I at some point want to try one of the external drives myself and see what happens.

And if you want to get an external drive you have to get ones that have self contained drivers and can be read as storage when plugged in. Seems the Samsung externals are the best options. Two that have been listed to work are Samsung Ultra Thin DVD Writer SE-218 and the Samsung SE-506 .

Video showing an external DVD working - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnwynmT8GVI

Also See here - https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/881797/external-dvd-drive-on-shield-android-tv-video-within-/

It would be possible if you'd find an external DVD reader that presents the DVD as read only mass storage over usb. I've heard about this some while ago but never looked or found something like it

Closest I got was ripping the DVD to ISO and using Kodi to mount the ISO as a DVD.

I looked in to this already. Direct from disc the short answer is no sadly. First it doesnt support the file system used on the discs and second you would have to get a player which right now none exist. Just follow others advice and rip to a HDD using MKV and use plex.

According to the operation system of Android TV, only movies in the following formats, MP4, 3GP, WebM, MKV can be played on Android TV with no trouble. That means, you cannot playing Blu-ray, CD, DVD Movies directly unless converting your DVD to an mp4 file format which can be recognized by Android TV well. What you need is a powerful Blu-ray/ DVD converter. The Pavtube BDMagic does the job best for you. The program is a combo function of both Blu-ray and DVD disc protection removal and format conversion, you can easily get a proper video file from Blu-ray/DVD for watching on Android TV with ease. Play DVD on Android TV / Play Blu-ray, DVD Movies Using Kodi on Android TV Box

I've asked around about this a few times, and it doesn't seem like there's a way to do it.