Vizio Smart TV WiFi and video streaming ?'s
 

The wife thought it would be a nice idea to upgrade our old 1999 Pioneer RPTV to a new Vizio 55" Smart TV with WiFi.

1st all I love the picture, hate the sound it is nothing like the older 37in Vizio we have in the bedroom. It did sorta force me to hook up a tuner and speakers for better sound (already had it).

Now my question is this... Is there a way to get the Media App to see mapped network drives? Google just brings me info on the DLNA stuff...

The thing is the media server has the OS drive and the Media is on separate drives. Those drives are all Shared and Mapped to the HTPCs we have. The Media App on the Vizio only sees the Root of the server drive and none of the others...

Not crazy about installing software I know nothing about to get the TV to see the shared drives... I'm thinking this TV isnt as smart as they say LOL


All other devices see the network and everything with no additional software installed.

Anyone know more about this than me? for the time being I just hooked the HTPC to the TV and called it a day as it works well... but I thought if i used the TVs WiFi and Media app i could delete the HTPC altogether....

Terry, I realise you've probably already sorted this now, was just looking at some 0 reply threads!

I'm not familiar with that particular TV, but from what I have seen of Smart TVs, not many will natively play media direct from shared folders; that would mean it would need to have the variety of decoders and necessary processing power. I know you said you weren't keen on unknown software, but check out Plex and XBMC. I think they both support DLNA, assuming that your Vizio doesn't have anything 'native' for either. Install it on your media server and point it at your content and it will download metadata and do any necessary transcoding when you request content on your TV.

that is pretty much what I read too...

you need a program installed on the server like xmbc or tversity...

I did neither and just hooked the htpc back to the tv... mostly because it has an optical drive and there are rare times when the wife comes home with rentals and wants to have a movie night with the kids....:)

I totally forgot all about this thread... thanks for the heads up though