Setting up USB between my TV and Computers

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daveyjwin

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 2, 2007
Messages
198
I'm not sure if this is the right forum or not, but I thought I'd give it a go here.

I recently bought a new TV that conveniently has a couple USB plug-ins that make watching movies and whatnot a cinch. However, it's a bit of a pain to have to transfer things to my portable hard drive from my computer, carry it downstairs, and plug it into the TV, so I was thinking of ways to make this easier. On a related note, I have an extra laptop sitting around, relatively unused. So, I was thinking I could set the laptop up downstairs, and wirelessly access it from my desktop upstairs, and have my large, 2TB external USB plugged into both the TV and the Laptop. Then, I could download things directly from my desktop to my USB drive through the laptop, and then access it through the TV easily.

I guess my questions are twofold: one, would I be able to access the USB drive with some sort of USB hub, through two different devices (the laptop, and the TV) at the same time? Like, do USB Hubs work in reverse, such that I plug the one end into the hard drive, and the other two ends into my laptop and TV? And the other is, would this work? Any other ideas?

Thanks!
 
Make it a lot easier and get more out of it...get something like a WD Live system...you plug it in you TV and network, and it will basically do what you are looking for. From the network side it will show up as a file share and from the TV side it will have it's only little OS for watching movies, browsing the web, netflix, etc (dependent on model).

Or if you have a PS3/X-Box, just set up a DLNA server.
 
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Looked into the box things, and it's an option for sure, but I don't want to have to pay for anything extra when I have all the relevant pieces (except the USB hub) for my idea already.

I guess my question could be simplified as "how do I connect one external hard drive to two computers (one of which is actually my TV)?"
 
Could I get one of these, and then leave it on laptop mode for easy transferring and, whenever I want to watch it on my TV, just switch it to the other setting? Seems like an easy-ish solution.
 
USB does not support being plugged into two hosts at the same time. So you're not going to be able to plug both the TV and the laptop into the drive at the same time. Also consider that USB devices with filesystems on them are picky about being disconnected without using the OS to close (eject) them first. You'd want to make sure you properly ejected it the drive each time in Windows before using that switch. Otherwise you'd risk corrupting the drive.

Truth be told, it's just a lot easier to use a box like the WD Live. That way you just stream all your video from one source. Most playback features built into TVs are terrible. Clunky to use and often support only a very limited range of codecs and video formats. Some are 'less worse' than others but they're still a hassle to use on a regular basis. A separate player tends to support more formats and can usually be upgraded over time.

And unless you already know you've got very reliable wireless it's a lot less hassle to use a genuine wired ethernet connection.
 
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Or if your laptop is powerful enough just install XBMC on it and go to town.
 
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