whats a more effective way to watch movies from PC?

[bamf775]

I wanted to know who uses their PC to hook up to their TV to watch HD movies and who takes the time to burn HD movies onto a blu-ray or regular dvd?

I need help deciding what steps I should take to enjoy my new plasma 55" smart tv. I have HD movies saved on my PC 1080p-720p quality. I was either thinking about buying a blu-ray dvd burner and some blank dvds and trying to burn them or if i should just get a USB flash drive and move the files to my laptop and hook my laptop to my TV. What would you guys do and what would give the best quality? I have the lord of the rings trilogy in 1080p saved on my PC and i really wanna watch it on my new TV. Just not sure how to go about it without losing quality.

I'm not even sure if I'm asking the right questions. I apologize Im new at this. Normally Ive been just using my laptop to hook up to my TV to watch HD movies but I thought burning dvds would be more effective.

Thanks.

[Deleted]

HDMI-cable

[Faithh]

With a smart tv you can playback video's from an usb :/ DVD/Bluray are EOL

Playbacking a video on the TV with an usb is not a quality loss at all.. If you connect a laptop with a tv, think you have to change the pixelformat as well otherwise you get large faces :P

[obake1]

If you have a smart TV, just buy a big external HDD, transfer your stuff there, and plug that into the USB on your TV. If it is in some format the TV can't read, I'd recommend connecting your computer to the TV with a HDMI cable, but then you'd have to go through the trouble of setting up the display properties.

[Kegler]

streaming netflix

[George]

DVI-HDMI or HDMI-HDMI cable from your PC to the TV. This way your TV will be seen as a second monitor for your PC. Then, just play and enjoy.

[Shakadam]

Modern smart-TV's have DLNA support don't they? I'd just hook it up to my home network and stream the movies directly from my PC.

[Cyanotical]

the "best" way is to build a HTPC and Media Server combo

movies are stored in ISO format on the media server and then streamed to the HTPC over network, the ISO formatting retains all the special features and does not lose quality

you use windows media center on the HTPC and Windows Home Server on the Media Server, and the software MyMovies to facilitate the ISO mounting and streaming as well as cataloging and ripping

i've looked into tons of different options and after see this in action at my friend's house it really is the best if you are serious into digital home media

[Milkshake86]

the "best" way is to build a HTPC and Media Server combo

movies are stored in ISO format on the media server and then streamed to the HTPC over network, the ISO formatting retains all the special features and does not lose quality

you use windows media center on the HTPC and Windows Home Server on the Media Server, and the software MyMovies to facilitate the ISO mounting and streaming as well as cataloging and ripping

i've looked into tons of different options and after see this in action at my friend's house it really is the best if you are serious into digital home media

I'd say a close alternative is housing all your movies on your desktop, and using your Xbox 360 as the media center. 2 seperate ways to do this now, as mine literally picked up all my network shared folders instantly allowing use of the system video player. However I took a few mins and setup the mediacenter app and such its pretty impressive for the xbox.

[Honzi]

I've got a western digital media player ( link ) for that purpose. Just copy your movie onto an usb stick plug it in and watch it. The media player makes absolutely no noise, that's why I got it since my PC is quite noisy.

[Deleted]

For Hooking up HTPC to TV I use a HDMI cable (no support for network on tv sadly) and then use my PC 7.1 surround sound for audio
Playback wise I use Plex Media center.

Simple does the trick, and Plex allows me to run media to any pc in the house that I want to from my HTPC

[Deleted]

I stream from PC to TV

[BicycleMafioso]

I changed your title from "on" to "from".

And personally, I'd stream it either directly on the TV or through my regular PC, my notebook, a noiseless HTPC. HDMI interface is widespread now, and it depends whether the fans from the notebook/pc would be intrusive enough.

A noiseless surfing/HTPC is a great idea for me personally, but you'd probably want to hook it up to a receiver anyway.

[S7orm]

30 bucks of USB stick

problem solved for the next 10 years at least

[MMKing]

Plug the Comp to the TV as a second monitor, mirror the TV image to the PC screen and turn on the movie.

[bamf775]

Ok, so let me get this straight. I can just load my movies on a usb stick and plug it into my smart tv and it will be able to play them? even an .mkv file?

Sorry for my ignorance.

[Deleted]

Ok, so let me get this straight. I can just load my movies on a usb stick and plug it into my smart tv and it will be able to play them? even an .mkv file?

Sorry for my ignorance.

You can yea but I tried this method first and the movies skipped and jumped due to the USB being a cheap shitty thing it was not able to feed the movie fast enough. At least that's what the guy at the shop said ^^

[bamf775]

You can yea but I tried this method first and the movies skipped and jumped due to the USB being a cheap shitty thing it was not able to feed the movie fast enough. At least that's what the guy at the shop said ^^

So, is it better to just use an HDMI cable from my laptop to my TV and watch it that way? Do I lose quality either way?

[Deleted]

Not sure tbh m8 I would say use a network cable from the router to TV and turn file sharing on. Works flawless

[DeltrusDisc]

the "best" way is to build a HTPC and Media Server combo

movies are stored in ISO format on the media server and then streamed to the HTPC over network, the ISO formatting retains all the special features and does not lose quality

you use windows media center on the HTPC and Windows Home Server on the Media Server, and the software MyMovies to facilitate the ISO mounting and streaming as well as cataloging and ripping

i've looked into tons of different options and after see this in action at my friend's house it really is the best if you are serious into digital home media

This, but it's kind of extreme and overkill for most and a hassle - get a nice long HDMI cable. :P