You have a NAS drive filled with your favorite movies and TV shows, but now what? You don't want to be stuck streaming them to smaller screens. Well, if you have a decent Smart TV, you don't have to. Most Smart TVs can connect to NAS drives on your network, making it easy to get at your content.
In this guide, we'll show you how to connect the drive to your network and ensure your TV can find it.
Turning your media drive into NAS
If you already have a good network-attached storage (NAS) setup, you can skip this part of the process. If you haven't, you can either build one, buy a turnkey NAS, or connect a media drive to your network so other devices can access it. Fortunately, this isn't a difficult process, though some router manufacturers make it a little harder than others.
Bear in mind that the process for setting up NAS drives differs depending on the router you have, so we recommend consulting your router's user manual. In most cases, however, it should look like this:
- Connect your media storage drive to your router by USB or Ethernet if available.
- Access the router's configuration portal by entering its IP address into your web browser. The required address and login credentials should be printed on a sticker on the router.
- Inside the configuration portal, look for the attached storage or external storage options, then follow the setup process to get started. Contact your router manufacturer for support if you can't find this option or run into issues.
If you don't already have a media drive and you're using a brand-new storage device, you'll need to format it using a computer before connecting it to your router. We recommend using the FAT32 or ExFAT formats since they tend to work better with Smart TVs — as well as with Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux. If you don't have a drive, opt for a good SSD over a traditional hard drive (HDD) for the best performance.
Your router, especially ISP-provided hardware, may not have the means to run an external drive or have ample performance to handle more advanced tasks, so we recommend building a dedicated NAS device.
Accessing your NAS on a Smart TV
Once your drive is live on the network, it's time to access it from your Smart TV. To do this, you'll need a media player that supports network storage. Some TVs will have one built-in; if yours doesn't, downloading a third-party alternative from your TV's app store will be necessary.
The VLC media player by Videolabs works great on Google TV, so we'll follow the steps for that here. The process should be fairly similar for other media players.
- Open VLC or other media player on your Smart TV.
- Find the Network or Local network option.
- All drives on your home network should be displayed. Select the one you want to use.
- Select the video file you want to play.
One of the great things about VLC is that it supports the most popular audio and video codecs used today, meaning that no matter what file format your content is saved in, it should play without any issues. That may not be the case with other media players, so if you have a file that won't play, you may just need to get your hands on a different player.
Getting the most out of NAS media streaming
As is often the case with using NAS, the initial setup process — actually connecting drives to your network — is the difficult part. Once that's out of the way, it takes just a few steps to get your data on almost any device. You can even access NAS storage remotely from almost anywhere with a little extra effort.
It should also be noted that if you have more sophisticated NAS hardware, like those offered by Synology and TerraMaster, you can enjoy a much more advanced media streaming setup — like a personal Netflix of sorts. Our guide to installing Jellyfin on your NAS explains how to get one up and running. If Jellyfin doesn't fit your needs, Plex and other options work brilliantly.