How can you watch movies on NAS on TV? Without installing Jellyfin, I tried all three direct connection routes

the 4TB drive of the Feiniu NAS at home is getting fuller, and the qBittorrent downloaded videos piled up. The problem arose: the family wanted to watch on the living room TV, but they couldn't just copy USB drives from the computer every time. My first reaction was also to pretend to be Jellyfin, I did write about that set before, the scraped poster wall looks decent. But when it came time to equip the old TV in the bedroom and my mother-in-law's house, I hesitated—Docker, transcoder, and client setup took over half an hour, and the old man only recognized the buttons on the remote.

later, I tried the direct connection routes without installing a video library one by one, and found three in total, each with its own purpose. To sum up: 90% of households use the first method, the second helps extend the life of an old TV, and the third is suitable for temporarily putting things on the phone screen on the big screen.

first understand: the TV reads documents by itself and is fed to it by others, which are two different things

three paths may sound confusing, but the real difference lies in 'who reads the file and who is decoding.' SMB direct connection means the TV itself takes the account and password to the NAS shared folder, placing it wherever it reads, while the NAS only needs to hand over the data; DLNA acts as the driving force for the phone or NAS, pushing video streaming to the TV, while the TV still does the decoding work; Devices like Jellyfin are NAS that first converts the video into a format that can be used by the TV before feeding it over, with the heaviest work on the server side.

this difference directly determines one thing: if you take the first two paths, whether the TV chip can hold up or not is up to the film. The 4K TV in my living room plays H.265 suppressed videos smoothly, but when I switch to Dolby Vision original discs, they turn gray and purple—not because of the internet, but because decoding is a hurdle I can't get past it. So before choosing a route, first check what kind of films you've saved.

Route 1: The TV comes with a built-in player and connects directly to SMB, done in five minutes, and both parents will use it

TVs nowadays basically come with a "media center" or "HD player," all of which include a network device. Select SMB, enter the NAS internal IP address, and use a read-only account I specially set for the TV for the password—don't be lazy and just use admin. I've written about permissions separately before. The TV only allows watching videos, so you can't delete it even if you wanted.

test: 1080P compressed films (bitrate 5 to 6 megabytes) and 4K H.265 compressed plates (20 to 30 megabytes) are smooth, with no lag during fast forward drag-and-drop. My TV network port is 100 Mbps, with a maximum throughput of around 94 Mbps. I've calculated this before, and the suppressed version is still far from the limit. A note for WiFi viewers: if the TV is stuck to 2.4G, it will still lag during peak hours. First, make sure it's connected to 5G.

the TV entry points differ, don't panic when you dig: Xiaomi has a built-in "HD player," TCL and Hisense mostly call it "Media Center," and Sony has the homepage "Media" app, all under the "Add Device" or browse network section. If you really can't find it, take a photo of the TV homepage with your phone and recognize each icon one by one—there's always one that is.

There are four

pits, and I've stepped on them all. The first issue is the DTS audio track has no sound: Many source audio tracks are DTS or DTS-HD, and without decoding authorization from this brand, the image works perfectly but it's mute. Many people think the TV is broken at this point. The solution is either to choose the AAC version when filming, or to follow the second option below. The second issue is that external subtitles don't display: the subtitle file name must be exactly the same as the video file name (only the extension differs), placed in the same folder, and encoded as UTF-8—I've encountered a version of SRT with a different encoding, which looked fine to the naked eye but the player refused to release it, and when converted to UTF-8, it appeared immediately. Third, don't let the NAS IP drift around. The address assigned by DHCP loses contact as soon as the TV is changed, leaving the elderly unable to save themselves. bind the NAS to a static IP on the router once and for all. The fourth and most hidden feature: when playing Dolby Vision videos on a regular HDR TV, the picture appears gray and purple, like a layer of fog—this isn't broken; the TV doesn't recognize the dynamic metadata of the source. Changing playback mode from auto to HDR10 in settings can save most of it.

Route 2: Kodi, the lifeline of old TV, reviving all audio tracks and subtitles

old TV in the bedroom had a built-in player and DTS went silent, so I installed Kodi on it. Most Android TVs can be installed. You can install an APK on the official website, and once you plug in a USB drive, it's all done. It's free and ad-free.

Kodi method is to add video sources: select SMB for the protocol, enter the address, account password, and point to the movie folder, and that's it. It can handle DTS and TrueHD tracks on its own, supports external subtitles .srt .ass, and even the BDMV folder structure of Blu-ray original discs can be placed directly. My cousin's 80GB original drive in Synology is fully active with Kodi tracks and subtitles—his 2.5G network card is a different matter at the network layer, and I've written whether 10G internal network is worth it, so I won't elaborate here.

Kodi the first time you open it, it's an English interface. First, go to Settings and change the language to Chinese—there's an old pitfall: after switching to a full Chinese block, because the built-in skin doesn't include a Chinese font. First, change the font in the appearance settings from default to Arial Based, then switch to the language, and it won't be square. I've been stuck with this pitfall since I first installed Kodi eight years ago, and I've never fixed it.

here's an advanced tip: for videos with very large bitrates, switching the protocol from SMB to NFS in Kodi makes it smoother. NFS is cheaper and is specifically for streaming media. The trade-off is that the NAS side needs to provide an extra NFS service, which is a "optimize only if you can use it" mode—don't start by messing around.

Kodi also has the benefit of being given away for free: it can scratch the poster wall by itself. Movies in the folder automatically add posters and synopsis, and the interface instantly changes from a file manager to an on-demand station. At this point, you actually have a non-transcoded Jellyfin—not a penny spent, not a container left.

Route 3: DLNA screen casting, phone as remote control—convenient but conspicuous

the third option, which is least device-friendly: turn on DLNA reception on your TV (usually hidden in the media center), install an app on your phone that supports screen casting, select the clip and tap casting, and your phone becomes a remote control. If the NAS side had DLNA service, it would be even better. The phone could directly browse the NAS library before pushing—Synology has a media server in the main menu that can be opened. Feiniu natively doesn't include this, and if you really need Docker, install MiniDLNA. I found it too troublesome and didn't install it.

shortcomings must be exposed: DLNA launched video streaming, and if external subtitles don't follow, subtitle enthusiasts are discouraged; The Blu-ray original disc basically can't be played; The fast-forward response is also half a beat slower. My current usage is to push photos and videos on my phone to the TV for my parents, and to watch the full episodes, we still follow the first two routes.

When will

finally be the Jellyfin

mentioned three direct connections, when should it be released on Jellyfin or Feiniu TV versions? Three signals: First, if you want to scrape a complete poster wall and sync your viewing progress, Kodi's scratching is single-player, so switching TVs won't match your progress; Second, if you have an old tablet or old box at home and can't fix the new format, you have to have the NAS convert it to feed it; Third, they want to use their traffic to watch the movies at home outside. Three of them are perfect, just like my Jellyfin full record and a full set of , worth it. I just want to watch movies on TV, don't mess around, just connect directly.

take it personally, plus my final setup

to give a concrete checkmark:

my current setup: the living room TV has a built-in player directly connected to SMB, so the whole family watches here daily; Old TV in the bedroom is equipped with Kodi, specialized for DTS and subtitles; Photos are pushed by DLNA on mobile phones. Three devices had zero transcoding, the N100 CPU was idle the whole time, electricity bill looked good. If you want to get started, here's the order: first bind the NAS with a static IP, then open a read-only account on the TV, then try connecting the living room TV directly, and fix any stuck parts—most likely, you'll finish by the second step.