Can any Smart TV's share a Blu-ray player on a HTPC?

ytrebil

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Hi guys, new to this Smart TV stuff - I have a PC with a Blu-ray player and I'm looking at a new TV to hook up to my network (probably wired as wireless is too slow for the large bandwidth stuff like Blu-ray apparently). Will I be able to play Blu-rays off my PC and be able to watch them on my TV?

If so, will any Smart TV with an ethernet connection do this, or only particular makes/models?

Thank you.
 
I would say " No way "
But would be interested in the replies.
Because if you can, Now that would be awsome.
 
Can the pc be output directly to the tv? either via long HDMI or moving the pc to the tv room? this way, its easy to do...

another thought is that most of the new samsungs support .mkv files so legitimate backups to this format should play (have only tested DVD files with makeMKV)

Hopefully this helps a little?
 
No one knows for sure, the topic was discussed here, the latest generation ESxxxx Samsungs might play the output from MakeMKV over USB but no-one knows if they can handle it over DLNA. There are many quirks in TV media players so I wouldn't just assume that it can handle it. There is also a Plex client for Samsung TV's which gives it a far better GUI for media playback then the stock Samsung UI.

Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, Philips, LG you can all forget about. Panasonic is the only other one who might be worth a look as they did a major overhaul of their 2012 TV's the T50 series. Although it doesn't give the bitrate but it does say MPEG2 are supported in .mkv containers and MakeMKV is really the only tool which generates this output from DVD's. H.264 is also mentioned and although it supports VC-1 too it doesn't mention if it's supported in mkv for not (VC-1 in mkv would be a strong indicator they tested Blu-ray's ripped with MakeMKV too).

You will of course need an ethernet wired network for this, wireless is no good.

Might be safer to get a WDTV Live and let that handle the media playback (it can handle the output from MakeMKV) so even if the TV you get doesn't pan out you can fall back to this.
 
Yeah I realise that I can just use a HDMI from my PC to TV and play a Blu-ray/DVD from my PC and do it that way, just didn't know if there was a way to find my Blu-ray player on the network via a Smart TV and be able to use and control it.
 

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