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jonathanrbecker

Home Linux Media Wireless Network

Post by jonathanrbecker »

Hello Friends!

I have a fair amount of movies and music saved to an external hard drive and though I can view them on my TV at home if I plug the USB into it, that's a bit of a pain in the rear to use as a media server, as I'm regularly wanting to add, delete and generally manage my files. What I'm looking to do is have my hard drive connected to my desktop (in the family room, where the router is) and be able to access the movies and music I have on that hard drive from my TV in the living room. Here is the equipment I currently have; I believe I have all of the pieces of a potential network but am not skilled enough to know the best way to put all of the pieces together from a Linux (Mint v. 17.1) perspective:

A wireless router with two unused USB ports
A smart TV with an available HDMI port
A Raspberry Pi with a WiFi dongle and HDMI cable
A WiFi repeater to boost signal strength in the living room

I have a few ideas in my head as to how this might work and know I will likely be using Samba. That said, as I'm a novice, I thought it might be best to ask for advice on the best/easiest way to set it up BEFORE I start slapping stuff together. Put another way, I think I have all of the components to have a pretty cool Media Network in my house- I just don't know how to put it all together. Any advice on how to tackle this?

Thanks in advance!

Jonathan
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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txba516
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Re: Home Linux Media Wireless Network

Post by txba516 »

Hi Jonathan!

So we can more accurately help you with setting up your equipment, can you please list the make/model for the TV and wireless router? Also, is the desktop connected via WiFi or is it wired to the router? I'm assuming the TV is on WiFi? This may be as simple as loading a media server software package on your Mint desktop and adding the content on the USB drive for it to stream out to the network.

Cheers!
LM17.2 x64 Cinnamon
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jonathanrbecker

Re: Home Linux Media Wireless Network

Post by jonathanrbecker »

Hi txba516!

Thanks for your reply- rarely remember to include all of the details, so thank you for asking further.

The TV is a Samsung UN60H7150AF.

For the router, we're using the (XFINITY) Arris TG862 to go straight/wired to our desktop; however, when the cable guy was here installing (new house for us), he said the ASUS RT-AC66R (Dual Band 3x3 802.11AC Gigabit Router) we already owned would have both a wider range and potentially stronger signal, so we run another ethernet out of the Arris router and into the ASUS router for WiFi.

The TV is indeed connected to our WiFi network.

One thing that may or may not have been clear in my original posting: I'd really like to be able to not only access all of this content from the TV in my living room but also play, stop, pause, etc. That's probably self-explanatory, but I really don't want to have to go running into the other room to pause the movie if the pizza man is at the door :)

Thanks in advance!

-Jonathan
wayne128

Re: Home Linux Media Wireless Network

Post by wayne128 »

the ASUS RT-AC66R (Dual Band 3x3 802.11AC Gigabit Router) would have both a wider range and potentially stronger signal, so we run another ethernet out of the Arris router and into the ASUS router for WiFi.

As you already have this Asus wireless giga-router with two USB ports, your first step could be just use the USB port for file sharing.

Plug in USB drive to the router's USB port, get into router setup, and follow their process to select what folder/files to share.

Potential issue is slow USB drive file transfer, in addition to common wireless transfer via air being interrupted by noise or partially block by steel in the structure.



The next level is to buy a Hard Disk that came with Network Access, or NAS hard disk, this would plug into the Ethernet port of the router and share files and folder, with very high speed over the ethernet.. buy the one with gigabit speed, it will be very fast, leaving the potential problem to be limited by the wireless network.

I think these two would be relatively easy to set up and very little to maintain.
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txba516
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Re: Home Linux Media Wireless Network

Post by txba516 »

I agree that using the router USB port should be pretty dead simple for sharing your content. However if you want to stream it from your desktop, then I'd recommend loading up a streaming media software that can handle DLNA streaming. Then plug in the USB drive and add it as a media source.

Some recommendations for you...
ReadyMedia http://sourceforge.net/projects/minidlna/
Serviio http://serviio.org/
Plex https://plex.tv/ (If you choose Plex, your TV has some issues with using the Smart Hub Plex App. You should use the AllShare app to connect via DLNA instead.)

Cheers!
LM17.2 x64 Cinnamon
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