2014-05-06, 11:29
(2014-05-06, 11:01)tennisbgc Wrote: not everyone own's a nas.
It doesn't have to be actual NAS. Any computer on your local network will do. I personally share my files using NFS from a Linux desktop with LOTS of internal storage (four 2TB drives in a 6TB RAID-5), but a friend of mine stores all of her media on an external hard drive she plugs into her laptop, using SMB to share it on the network (with the reasoning that she's the only one who should be watching her videos, and if she's at home so is her laptop). Another friend uses a Raspberry Pi and a large external hard drive.
The only thing that's different about sharing from another computer versus using NAS is that you need to make sure the computer sharing the media has a static IP on your local network (which you can set either in the computer's network settings or on your router). Otherwise, XBMC might not be able to find it if the IP address changes. With NAS, especially if you're talking about a router that has a USB port for an external hard drive, you don't have to worry about the IP because it will always be the same. But that's really the only difference between NAS and just sharing files from another computer on your local network.
