FreeNAS as media player

[hitman0517]

Hi. Sorry if this may be a stupid question (hopefully not). I'm quite new at the whole NAS setup and still learning its ins and outs. So, I have freeNAS installed on my old desktop pc (it's an AMD A-series APU). My question is, I want to play the videos which are stored on my nas onto my TV but my tv is not a "smart tv" so there is no "network connectivity" available. I can connect my nas to my tv via hdmi. Is it possible to play the movies straight from my nas and output it to the tv via the hdmi connection maybe by using plex (or something similar to it) that would also run off of my nas? Thank you in advance.

 

[nojohnny101]

Short answer is no. All you have to do is get a "smart box" (think ruku, appletv, firetv, etc.) that plugs into your "dumb" tv. Install plex as an app on any of the supported platforms (ruku, appletv, etc.) then play your media from your plex server living on FreeNAS like that.

How this makes sense.

 

[hitman0517]

thank you @nojohnny101 for the response.

 

[kappclark]

Yes - we have a 'dumb' Sony TV, but with the Firestick, we can access the Plex server hosted on the Freenas .. I also use the Freenas to host the music collection which is accessed from a remote client.

 

[hitman0517]

Thanks for the reply @kappclark. As i understand it, this is similar to what @nojohnny101 mentioned. i would need to get some sort of a device that would connect to my tv and then to my network. I was hoping there was some way i could just simply connect the nas to my tv via hdmi but i guess not. thank you both for the help.