A friend asked me recently how to set things up so he can play his media via the WDTV from files on his Pogoplug drives. I looked at the forums and there are lots of threads about the Pogoplug stopping after playing for a half hour of so. The message threads were too old and the reply button was gone from the thread. So, it seems there have been quite a few people who want to know how to do this, so here is a REAL solution!
Here is how it is done, and for added validity, I have fully tested by playing a complete 1 hr 33min MKV movie file from a PP drive via the WDTV to TV and it worked perfectly all the way to completion. I even paused after the first hour and “rewound” a little, and then continued on.
I had to test this again, because I never play stuff from the PP drive using the WDTV, since everything I have to play is on the attached WD drives or drives elsewhere on the home network. I had done it briefly a while ago to test, but never played a complete movie until now!
Anyway, here is the “trick” for doing this. First of all, don’t use the WD’s “Media server” access, because, as many of us have discovered, streaming stops after a while. I don’t know why, I don’t really care either (other than for curiosity sake) because it all does work using the WD’s “Network shares” access. But, you will notice that the Pogoplug does not naturally show up under Network shares (because the PP is essentially a server).
What has to be done is that the PP drive(s) need to be set up to be shared on the home network…
A while ago, I wrote up a tip at the PP Forum that explains how to do all this, and I just finished editing it again for better clarity. See this link:
http://support.pogoplug.com/entries/21785199-How-to-share-and-use-Pogoplug-drives-on-home-network
If this doesn’t work for anyone, then things are not set up correctly… THIS WORKS!