# disguise network share as USB mass storage?

## avx

So, my tv isn't the most modern one, but I'm quite happy with it and currently not willing to buy a new one. Unfortunately, the built-in mediaplayer only plays files from a medium connected via USB (there's no LAN-jack in the tvset).

All my media resides on my NAS and I'm not really motivated, putting files on a thumbdrive/external hdd everytime I'd like to watch a movie, thus I thought about somehow emulating a mass storage devices which gets it's data from the network shares.

ie:

TV <-> some USB toy <-> ethernet <-> switch <-> NAS

I found this which seems to be capable to do what I want, only problems are it's a) quite expensive and b) uses wireless, which is bad because of the way the endpoints are located.

The NAS (from Thecus, if that matters) runs Linux and I can share it's data via (S)FTP/NFS/SMB. So I'm wondering, is there such a device in existance?

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## chithanh

You need a USB controller that can work in slave mode.

If the TV supports only MSC devices the controller can be driven by the file-backed storage gadget. A limitation is that you cannot modify the contents of the drive while the TV is accessing it.

If the TV supports MTP/PTP devices you could use the userspace PTP gadget driver, or figure out how to integrate the Android MTP/PTP function patches that were posted to the linux-usb mailing list in December.

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## avx

Thanks for the input, I've done a little reading on this, but I can't really wrap my head around all of this. From what I understood, it's technically possible, but after some searching, neither could I find a ready-built product, nor did I find a lot of information about the hardware in my tv-set or the NAS, so for now, I think I'll accept the situation and look for other/easier solutions.

Trotzdem danke  :Wink: 

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## Trog Dog

If your tv has a vga input can't you just hook a pc up to it and use your tv as the monitor - forget about using the tvs media player - just view your content with vlc or equivalent

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## avx

VGA no, but I could use HDMI/DVI, yes. But since all my media is stored on my NAS, that would mean another machine running. I once had an htpc, but I dropped it, since I couldn't store enough data in a hifi-rack compatible enclosure.

Maybe I'll just wait for the Raspberry Pi and try my luck with it, that should in theory also be able to play files my tv won't play.

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