Play files from my pc

Community Archives WD TV Live Networking
1

I have a very simple question, I tried to find an answer reading through older topics, but most is too complicated for me, so this might have been asked before, or perhaps the answer is obvious, still, I hope someone can give me a very simple answer.

I have connected the liveplayer to my modem, through which I have internet access, but also a connection to my pc.

Now, I thought that I would be able to watch mkv files, which are still on my pc, through this connection. So directly from an internal hdd from my pc, without copying them to a usb drive or another external hd. But it seems I need a nas or a network drive or something? I don’t know what a nas is and I don’t know how to setup the passwords and stuff.

It was so easy for me to connect my notebook and my desktop pc, both have win7 and there is a homegroup option in both. If I put a file in a shared folder, both can access those files without problem. So I was hoping I could create for example a ‘Media’ folder somewhere on my second hd in my pc, and then tell liveplayer that it should play files from that folder. But even  though lievplayer finds my pc, it says there aren’t any files there and I can’t browse through folders in my pc.

Is what I want to do possible at all? And if so, can anyone point me to a step by step guide or something.

A huge thanks in advance!

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Welcome to the forums.

You don’t need a NAS – what you want to do is called “network shares” and is an option on the Live.  Your workgroup needs to be named “WORKGROUP” and you need to add “everyone” to your shared folders (it would also be good if you disabled passwords on those folders).  Just right-click on the folder you want to share, choose properties and then the file-sharing tab, and go to advanced settings (where you can “add” everyone to your share and where you can disable the password).  Then make sure each PC workgroup name is “WORKGROUP” (you can see this/rename it in Computer Properties, by right-clicking on My Computer) and you should be good to go.

On the Live side just choose Net shares from your video menu (when you first turn the Live on you will need to wait a few minutes as it gets established to the network).