I hope this question has not already been covered already, I done a few searches and didn’t find anything.
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THE SHORT VERSION:
In short I am looking for a solution to STREAM movies and music FROM my external hdd which is connected to my WD LIVE TV SMP to my iPad2 over both wifi and 3G , without the need of a PC running 24/7 or the need of purchasing a NAS, which supports avi and mkv.
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THE LONG VERSION + FAILED ATTEMPTS:
Okay so the other day I purchased a WD TV Live Streaming Media Player (here is the link: http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=330). I also have a 1TB external hdd connected to it in my tv room with the WD TV Live SMP connected to my PC through wifi. I have managed to successfuly map the drive on my PC and I am able to easily send movies from my pc to the external hdd over wifi. This is all great.
The problem is I am trying to stream movies and music from my external hdd (connected to the WD TV Live SMP) to my iPad2. It would also be good to be able to stream movies and music to my android phone (optional) through both wifi (when i am at home) and through 3g (when I am away from home). I have searched endlessly and came up with the following workarounds:
1. Airplayit – This is an app installed on both pc, android phone and ipad 2. It works great and plays every movie format. However this app requires you to install software on your pc. You then browse for folders that you want to share on your pc. In my case I have it sharing my mapped drive and it all works so well. However the only problem is I must have my pc on 24/7 to be able to access my external hdd.
This is not an ideal option for me as my pc is not the most reliable and tends to freeze atleast once a day (**bleep** custom built pc!!)
2. FileBrowser (for ipad2) – This is an app which lets you access files on remote computers. I have managed to set this up to work over wifi only when I am connected to the same network as the WD TV LIVE SMP. This work around is okay because it doesnt require a PC to work. However it doesnt support many movie formats and most of mine are avi and mkv which are both unsupported. The app however gives you the option of downloading the movie to the ipad and then playing it with a player that supports other formats such as CineXplayer. I would prefer to stream the movies rather then download it and wait 20minutes +
I also cannot get it to work when I am away from home mainly because I have no idea on getting the actual address of the external hdd to access the content over 3G. Is it something along the lines of //nas-unit/usershare/userpath (dont know what any of that is and not sure where to get this info)
Sorry about the mega long post 
Any help will be greatly appreciated 
Thanks in advanced guys!
