ibantu wrote:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m understanding that I can still use my WD TV Live SMP boxes to access the Macbook pro/USB drives over the network. Will the menu still display as on the normal WD TV Live SMP to USB drive hook-up or will it appear as something different?
It’ll look the same. You want to turn the Media Libary function on. Then when you go to the VIDEOS menu hit the red button and select either a local USB drive or a shared network drive. Either way, you browse the folders the same way and Media Library will automatically index the contents.
The difference is when you select a media server from the red button. The resulting options are driven by the server. For instance, in Tversity’s music category I have “folders” for All, Genre, Artist, Album, Year, etc. Like I was saying before, I can just press Play on the All folder and it plays every track (way easier than creating playlists.) There is also a Folders option in Tversity to browse the files directly preserving the same folder structure as the actual scanned drive. Plex is similar, although it doesn’t have the aforementioned All folder.
ibantu wrote:
I assume that if all the TV’s have a device that have XBMC, Servio, Plex or etc software on it - that this would provide the media control interface panel for accessing my movie drives. I’ve never seen any media apps on WD and the ROKU has Plex but not an XBMC app. I’m hoping to have the same interface at each TV. Also I’ve been looking at the Android devices too, but none of them seem dedicated to streaming movies directly from attached USB drives. They seem to be jack of all trades and master of none.
When we talk about “media servers” we mean software that runs on a PC where your media is stored. Instead of browsing to the folder on the shared drive via the WDTV’s FILES menu (tedious) a media server software app sorts and indexes all your stuff. It is similar to what WDTV does when it scans your USB HDD, but faster and with more flexibility. Note, the Media Library index will still happen - the WDTV light will blink while that is going on. The difference is in the options you are presented with for selecting and working with your content.
ibantu wrote:
I may sound stupid but these are the issues that I have to iron out. I have to know which devices to tie into the network so that there is consistency at each TV in my home (four of them). Will the WD TV Live SMP still display as if the USB drives are still connected to them? Will the metadata info and all the other nice stuff be gone? Thanks guys!!!
Not stupid at all. We all asked ourselves these same questions and pretty much learned either by reading these boards or by experimentation. So this last question is: can you have shared drives on a media server and physically-attached USB HDD’s coexist and accessible on the same WDTV? I don’t think you’d want to do that. Why? First, you can only choose one source at a time from the red button. You could try creating favorites like I did for movies, but not sure if that works with local USB drives. Second, the way Media Library on the WDTV handles local USB content vs media server content is different. Switching between the two would require waiting while the dang thing re-indexes.
That said, if you are asking if your media can be accessed by multiple WDTV’s simultaneously, that is the magic of a media server setup. YES! Imagine, all your movies and music sitting on a hard drive on a PC in your home office. Then multiple WDTV’s throughout your home all accessing that content as desired. Limited only by network bandwidth and the speed of your dedicated server PC. But in most cases it’s no problem. That’s a good reason right there not to be tethered to USB drives hanging off the side of your WDTV.
