Viewing NAS content on my LG OLED (WebOS) Tv

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Steerpike
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Viewing NAS content on my LG OLED (WebOS) Tv

Post by Steerpike »

I need some basic guidance on what's going on with my QNAP TS-251 and how to proceed.

Recently I bought an LG OLED TV, which runs WebOS. On the main 'dashboard', there's an item called 'Storage', and it has a box 'Media Server' and shows the name of my QNAP NAS. When I select it, it offers two things; 'Photo & Video' and 'Music'. If I choose 'Photo & Video', it tells me that there are 432 Video items, and 45 photo items. If I select the 'Videos' item, I get a massive dump of thumbnails for every single video stored on my QNAP. And from those thumbnails, I can play any video I want. (For background, I've had this NAS for years, and mainly used it for file storage, but did dabble with using it as a Plex server years ago - which is why all my movies are on it - but abandoned Plex for various reasons, though it did work; Plex has long since been removed).

So my questions are:
  • I didn't load anything special on the LG TV; is there anything special running on the QNAP that is enabling this? I played around, years ago, with things like 'Video Station', and I currently have something called 'Multimedia Station' installed; it shows that 'Multimedia Services' are enabled, and it shows that Indexing and thumbnail generation have occurred. Further, Video Station is shown as disabled, but 'DLNA' is enabled, and it would appear that DLNA is the 'thing' responsible for 'publishing' my videos?
  • while I can play all the videos shown, they display according to filename, and in a massive blob of files; the filenames are not friendly, and the folder structure from the NAS is not visible. I carefully organized all the folders on the NAS to be informative.
  • Looking further at the Multimedia Console, I see that no transcoding is enabled (or necessary).
  • Also, I see that Video Station is disabled, DLNA is enabled (as mentioned), and there is a third item 'Media Streaming Addon' that is disabled.
  • should I enable Video Station, and/or, should I enable 'Media Streaming Addon'?
My goal is to be able to have a slightly better 'browsing' experience on the LG OLED TV - respect the folder hierarchy of the source files, and use the folder names rather than file names. But I DON'T want to get into loading PLEX, if I can avoid it. I spent weeks and weeks last time, trying to figure out why Plex was incessantly noisy on the NAS - disk churning, hour after hour, without anyone viewing anything, and this lasted for weeks / months - it wasn't just a temporary indexing thing. I keep the NAS in my bedroom and the disk access noise was simply unbearable (and there's nowhere else to put it right now). No amount of configuring anything (other than killing Plex itself) would stop the disk activity. So hopefully, I can get 'somewhere' by using perhaps Video Station? and/or 'Media Streaming Addon' ? I don't mind adding additional apps to the LG TV (WebOS) or the NAS if needed. EDIT - I also read about something called 'Qmedia'. Could that play a role?

Thanks for any help you can offer!
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dolbyman
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Re: Viewing NAS content on my LG OLED (WebOS) Tv

Post by dolbyman »

DLNA is just not a very userfriendly experience (just a very crude method to serve media)..I ditched it years ago (for..you guessed it...Plex)

My NAS are all out of earshot of the TVs so any sort of disk activity does not bother me at all.

You can also check out emby, if you want to look for an alternative media server
contenitore21
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Re: Viewing NAS content on my LG OLED (WebOS) Tv

Post by contenitore21 »

try to enable media streaming add-on
Steerpike
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Re: Viewing NAS content on my LG OLED (WebOS) Tv

Post by Steerpike »

contenitore21 wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 4:26 pm try to enable media streaming add-on
I found that my NAS was quite out of date (DNS setting got cleared and it hadn't been able to check for updates for some time, and I simply didn't notice). After updating to latest firmware, I also did a thorough update of all the apps, and also enabled video station, media streaming add-on, photo station, etc. After that, I also noticed on my TV there was a 'filter/view' option, and I played around with it. The net result of all this is that I can now browse my video collection on the TV in reasonably structured folders! It's a clunky experience, and everything seems to be located (from the TV perspective) under a "/Videos/Folder/" path (that doesn't exist visibly on the QNAP itself) but ... it's working well enough.

Sadly, I don't know whether what I see now is the result of 'Video Station', 'DLNA', or 'Media Streaming Addon' - I wish I had a better understanding of each of these components. I guess I could selectively disable each one on the NAS, and see what still works/doesn't work on the TV, but I fear I may break something (or re-trigger a painful reindexing and/or regeneration of thumbnails) so I guess I'll be thankful for what I've got, for now. Maybe it's time to re-consider Plex ... it's been a few years so maybe they've addressed the incessant disk access by now!
contenitore21
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Re: Viewing NAS content on my LG OLED (WebOS) Tv

Post by contenitore21 »

I think it's all due to the Media streaming add on. video folders etc are related to what you set in media streaming add on settings. as for plex I can't tell you my ts212 can't stand it
PaulGrim
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Re: Viewing NAS content on my LG OLED (WebOS) Tv

Post by PaulGrim »

The original post was interesting. I was previously able to click on 'NAS" on my LG TV [one of the boxes showing connected items] select music/videos - generated by, I assume. the TV then go to 'folder view' under movies, and find all my photos or movie files. Photos and videos I think were handled differently by the tv so I has to select which I wanted at some point. Anyhow, due to an LG TV auto update [despite this being turned off] My TV only now shows "minimserver' in one of its 'source' boxes - which I have installed on the nas, and HDMI 1 - which is my HDMI connection to the nas. When I now connect on this HDMI 1 box I get a screen that calls the item 'pc' - so it thinks its a computer - ok but it shows no directory or folders just three icons: Chrome/QTS/HDplayer. Nothing I click on in this screen takes me to any folders or options that allow me access to my photos or movies.
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