Am I allowed to ask how to download and watch TV shows?

[holyzombiejesus]

I really want to but have no idea how to do it. I want to watch them on my tv rather than my shitty laptop or PC.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Dunno but telling you how to get the films to play on the telly once you've got them isn't against the rules.

[Barry Admin]

Putting this back with edits.

[NoSleep]

I can watch video files on my telly via a USB thumb drive that plugs into the usb input on my cheapo (£25) DVD player. It only likes DivX (or is it XviD?) format, though.

If you have a PS3 or PS4 you will find those will allow you to view other file formats.

[beanheadmcginty]

Plug your laptop into your TV

[Sebastian Cobb]

What TV do you have and what do you have connected to it? You might be able to do this already.

[Puce Moment]

I download media onto a 3TB external hard drive. I download stuff on my PC and then I transfer it onto the drive to be played on my TV. It's a bit of a hassle alright, but I don't like how my Surface has a clipped screen when I broadcast to the TV via my Roku stick. As I'm often watching 15GB versions of classic films that have been digitally remastered, it seems to be the only system that truly works for me.

[Sebastian Cobb]

It's a bit of a pain to set up but if you have a nas kodi is good at pulling stuff from windows/linux network shares.

Plex is another option. You can get kodi on a firestick, probaby plex too. But anything that can do upnp should be able to interface with plex at some level, my 10 year old not-smart tv can just about do it but not very well.

[greencalx]

If both laptop and TV have HDMI ports I would have thought connecting them  would be a cheap and simple, if inelegant, solution.

If it's a USB drive than maybe you can somehow get a Raspberry Pi to act as an interface between the HDD and TV?

[Sebastian Cobb]

I use a PI 3 to do that, although I use an NFS network share instead of a HDD.

There are some limitations... The PI3 isn't very good at things like HEVC/x265 because it can't hardware decode. I think the PI 4 is better at this but not everything (like OSMC, which I'm using because it means I can still install packages from Rasbian) supports it.

One thing that is good about this setup is the PI can sync the outputted frame rate to the video file, so films are in judder-free 24p. Most andoid devices don't do this and have to repeat frames. I think some later fire sticks can though.

[Old Thrashbarg]

The best solution is really going to depend on the TV/connected devices available. Which is a pretty obvious thing to say, but there are so many options depending on whether you want to go just with equipment you've already got or buy additional bits and pieces, and what the budget is. And how comfortable you are with using the command  line, for example.

I've got an HDD plugged into a Pi 3, Plex server installed on the Pi, Plex clients installed on smart TVs and PS4, and all media from the HDD available on every screen in the house. And then Transmission installed on the Pi as well so I can just download torrents straight to the HDD without messing about transferring from whatever machine to the drive. Though doing that via SSH is trivial if grabbing something from another source.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I'm really tempted to spin up an instance of Airsonic for music now, It looks a lot like google music, which is ending and will allow the server to cast directly to my chromecast audio's without going through another client like a phone. Quite tempting just for the odd bits and pieces not on spotify.

Plex is probably the easiest for most users. But I don't like the idea of transcoding all the time so use nas/pi instead.

[Old Thrashbarg]

I was sceptical about the ability of the Pi to handle the constant transcoding, but it's dealt with everything I've thrown at it. I do only tend to download stuff at 1080p though, and compressed rather than Blu-Ray rips.

For music, I put together an Alexa Skill[nb]or forked an existing, partially completed Skill[/nb] to play directly from Plex. So ask Alexa to play whatever and it would make a request to the locally-hosted Skill (also on the Pi, made publicly available through ngrok) from the Amazon servers. It'd then search Plex using the server's API on my local network, find the publicly available URL for the song/album/playlist, respond with that, then Alexa would stream whatever lives at that URL. Very convoluted, but nice for listening to the stuff I've got in my library that isn't on steaming services.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Well the pi has hardware decoders for most stuff, so I guess concurrency could stress it easily. It's not that I thought the pi was unsuitable tbh (some synology nas's can do it) it's more I'd rather not transcode things if I don't have to, so having a PI as a client doing the playback is more desirable for me.

That alexa stuff seems cool but I really want to stay away from google/amazon automation. I've got a thread in here about thinking about toying with diy-ing it with home assistant.

[holyzombiejesus]

I just found out last night that I can plug my laptop in to my TV!

How do I get the actual show though? I'm genuinely unsure if I should ask, given Barry's edits to my original question, but say I wanted to watch the new Twilight Zone series but don't have Sky?

[Puce Moment]

I've got an HDD plugged into a Pi 3, Plex server installed on the Pi, Plex clients installed on smart TVs and PS4, and all media from the HDD available on every screen in the house. And then Transmission installed on the Pi as well so I can just download torrents straight to the HDD without messing about transferring from whatever machine to the drive. Though doing that via SSH is trivial if grabbing something from another source.

I would really love to transmit downloaded files to my TV directly instead of fucking around with external hard drives so I am going to try and decipher this post to see if I can get something similar.

[Old Thrashbarg]

If you've got the bits of hardware required I can walk you through it.

Requirements

• A TV capable of installing the Plex client app or a device capable of installing the Plex client app (https://www.plex.tv/media-server-downloads/?lang=#plex-app) that can be connected to your TV
• A machine capable of installing the Plex server (https://www.plex.tv/media-server-downloads/?lang=#plex-media-server) that will always be on (whenever you want to watch something)

[Gurke and Hare]

Feel I should mention Chromecast here - VLC now has Chromecast support.

[Puce Moment]

If you've got the bits of hardware required I can walk you through it.

Requirements

• A TV capable of installing the Plex client app or a device capable of installing the Plex client app (https://www.plex.tv/media-server-downloads/?lang=#plex-app) that can be connected to your TV
• A machine capable of installing the Plex server (https://www.plex.tv/media-server-downloads/?lang=#plex-media-server) that will always be on (whenever you want to watch something)

Shit, sorry I missed this. Thanks Thrash, this is proving useful for me at the mo! I think I will have some questions later on if you don't mind.

Feel I should mention Chromecast here - VLC now has Chromecast support.

Damn, I went for Roku instead. Roughly a third of media files I download do not play on my TV, so VLC would be fantastic.

[holyzombiejesus]

.

[magval]

Can anyone speak for a way of downloading videos from Youtube now that save-from doesn't work online?

Cursory glance on Google suggests I'd need software but that sounds risky. Anyone recommend something?

[NoSleep]

I thought you meant OffLiberty wasn't working anymore, but I just tried and offliberated a youtube video no problem.

http://offliberty.com

[magval]

No, I've never heard of that site, although it's not working for me either.

[NoSleep]

It might depend on what content you're trying to rip. Some are protected.

[Famous Mortimer]

"Any Video Converter" easily downloads videos from Youtube.

[Dex Sawash]

"Any Video Converter" easily downloads videos from Youtube.

Never would have guessed Nintendo Switch to HDMI cable would do that, cheers.