Connecting an external hard drive to a tv

[Felixwaw]

My family home has no internet so I wanted to connect an external hard drive to the tv to watch movies and TV! And there is no computer at the house to connect to the tv.

 

The tv does not have any usb or HDMI ports.

 

My plan is to buy a Roku express and an external hard drive. I was planning on getting a micro USB Splitter to power the Roku express and to connect the external hard drive to the Roku.

 

Do you think this set up will work? And is there an easier/cheeper way of doing this?

 

 

Link:

https://www.roku.com/en-ca/products/roku-express

 

[Godlygamer23]

Roku Express requires HDMI so you will either need to use a different TV or a converter. 

[johnny5c]

The USB port on the Express is only for power, the only current model that supports local USB playback is the Ultra.  If you don't want to spend much look into a Raspberry Pi.

[Felixwaw]

10 hours ago, johnny5c said:

The USB port on the Express is only for power, the only current model that supports local USB playback is the Ultra.  If you don't want to spend much look into a Raspberry Pi.

I have never used rasberry pi for anything before. Would it be able to connect to a tv using RCA cables, and be able to play any video format the external hard drive has?

[johnny5c]

56 minutes ago, Felixwaw said:

I have never used rasberry pi for anything before. Would it be able to connect to a tv using RCA cables, and be able to play any video format the external hard drive has?

It has both HDMI and composite (RCA) outputs so it'll work with any TV, here's the composite cable.

https://www.adafruit.com/product/2881

 

The RPi3 will play most common video formats, I even got 1080p h265 files to play smooth with a little overclocking but if you're using RCA cables you're limited to 480p.