Right now to watch my... ahem... totally legit and legal tv and movies, I transfer them onto a portable HD and plug them into a WD TV box that I got about 5-6 years ago. Not the best system, probably, but one I've grown accustomed to. Can I do the same with the Shield? The files are .mkv format.
Get Plex for the Shield. That's how I get to play my totally legit and legal tv and movies. I have my files on a network share that Plex gets to.
Yes rather easily and you can use Kodi instead of Plex. Kodi works great for just that.
I've gone through multiple iterations of how I access media from the Shield.
Hard drive directly connect to Shield.
Hard drive connected to Asus router via USB port.
Hard drive connected to Odroid XU4 via USB port, running Open Media Vault.
In all instances of the above examples I used either SPMC (early days), and now Kodi. I don't need to stream to other devices. I don't need to transcode. I just want to watch what's on the hard drive connected to the Odroid.
So, yes, you can do the same. I'd recommend using Kodi. Don't adopt the hard drive as internal storage. For that matter, don't do anything through the native Shield interface for the drive; do it all through Kodi. Add a source through the Videos section and select what type of source it is for the metadata scraper to do its job.
Have any questions? Ask away.
why you complicate things.. set up a nas put your movies there in iso, mkv, whatever
on the nas create a nfs share (faster) or samba
on kodi connect to the share and start playing the movie.. original quality no transcoding or whatever.
This is what I definitely dont do. I use a mibox but a shield is better. I have used kodi and plex (minimally) but I now use archos video player. I did DL vlc player for one finicky video.
Kodi all day
kodi, vlc, plex would be the main ones to do this
Everyone uses Kodi, Plex, Emby, etc. on a PC/laptop, Rasp Pi, or Android box. WD TV products were obsolete around the time you got one. Even Boxee Box was discontinued in 2012.
I use plex and love it. Considered Kodi but quick reviews say it was a bit less user friendly and the rest of my family isnt super tech savy. I love it for the most part. 99% of the time the file name that came with my totally legit file is all ready in the correct format for plex. I also just happened to organize larger folders of all the movies, tv shows etc in a way that plex could understand all ready anyway.
Kodi is for nerds and Plex is for consumers. Kodi it's more powerful and more complicated. Plex on Shield act as server too as mentioned above and you will have access from a plethora of devices running Plex app phones tablets, smart TVs computers. All of their apps are decent from UI and performance perspectives.
Grab yourself a sub $50 USD Android box based on Amlogic SoC, and slap LibreELEC/CoreELEC on it. For your purposes of playing your own media, it kicks the poop out of any other solutions, including the Nvidia Shield........... and for a fraction of the cost.
Dude you've gotta get Kodi to display your library. That's what this thing was built for!
Kodi will look at your library and pull all the artwork and metadata from the internet giving you a "netflix-like" experience with your own "totally legit tv and movies".
Yes, you can do the same with your Shield. You can connect your portable drive to your Shield via one of its USB ports. You can set it as either external storage or adaptive storage. You might want to install a media player such as VLC if you haven't already to use to play the files. Or as others have suggested you could use a media center such as Kodi or Plex.
Kodi is for those that like powerful media player features that don't want to pay thru the nose for "Lifetime" standard features. They enjoy tinkering. You can make Kodi as complicated or simple as you want.
With Kodi there is endless customisation available, with a powerful Addon ecosystem, that includes free PVR's inc. IPTV support and instead of a boring standard user interface you really can choose all manner of Skins.
Granted Plex is a great setup for those that need to support multiple Networked media player clients. You really need extra Networked Plex server hardware too. So there is increased cost.
It's never a great idea having a Plex server and Plex client on the same machine, especially on Android. One major Firmware update and it can all end in tears.
Kodi (& MrMC) can even use a Plex backend database. See PlexKodiConnect.
Personally I like to avoid Android everything, completely for demanding Kodi 4K HDR Atmos use. Ongoing Android Firmware updates always seem to break something, auto colorspace switching SDR/HDR with the current Shield Pie 9.0 OS update is one example.
Why don't you download apps like Teatv, CinemaHd or Tvzion?
VLC is the best option imo, Plex and Kodi are just too bogged down and slow.
I can think of something to watch and have it on in like 7 seconds later which is impossible on Plex and Kodi AFAIK
Kodi! No brainer.