Features, settings & updates

[Smithie]

Hi

I want to display photos on my roku tv from a thumb drive. (Flash drive). I am using a powered flash drive.

First question: can you or can you not, stick in a thumb drive and have your jpg photos show on the screen?

Next: I read that you can show photos by using roku media player but when i start media player I see a message that says “connecting to a DNLA media server”

Next question: what is a dnla media server?

Another question. Roku “help” says the following… (HOW does one create “autostart. m3u?! HOW is the following supposed to be useful? Argh this is super aggravating. )

Creating USB drive that will auto start a slideshow, music playback, or a movie.

Create a playlist file called Autostart. m3u in the root of the USB device. Put entries in that file that point to the media you want automatically played on your Roku. Set the Roku to auto-launch Roku Media Player when a USB device is inserted by going to the Settings > System > USB media menu. If you want to disable automatic playback, you can disable it the main Settings menu of Roku Media Player.

[makaiguy]

What model Roku?  As far as I know, in the current product line, only the Ultra has a USB port that can read from a thumb drive.   Some Roku TVs (ones with Roku capabilities built in) do as well. The other models only use USB for power and some can take a USB Ethernet adapter.

[Smithie]

Aha! Perhaps you have inadvertently answered my question. We have a samsung tv into which we plug our nifty roku stick. It also has a usb port and another hdmi port.

Apparently you are talking about a specific kind of tv that is a roku brand tv? And thus everything I am reading about how to view photos, assumes a specific brand of tv, and does not apply if one is using a roku stick in a tv? 

[makaiguy]

Sorry, didn't address your second question.

DNLA (Digital Living Network Alliance) is a set of standards for sharing media files over a local network.

If you install a DNLA server on your home computer and load it with photo/music/video files you can access them on Roku using the Roku Media Player.

[makaiguy]

If by "Roku stick"  you mean a Roku Streaming Stick model that plugs directly into an HDMI port on the TV without a standard male-to-male HDMI cable, then you are right.  There is nowhere on the Streaming Stick to plug in a thumbdrive.

If you have an available USB-A port on the TV, viewing photos on an attached thumb drive will depend on whether the TV itself supports that function.

I view my photos from my networked desktop computer via the Roku Media Player.  I'm using the free version of an old DLNA server called TVersity, because I like its array of indexing options, but there are numerous others. 

[Smithie]

Re DNLA server on my computer, I googled that and see it is something you can do via Windows. 
And I had previously found out that there is probably a way to attach my computer to any tv and basically use the tv as a monitor… 

but The whole reason I want to just plug and play a thumb drive is this situation:  friends get back from a trip and want to show us their photos.  
they come over with their jpg pics on a thumb drive.

What is the quick easy way to see those on my tv? I had thought roku had a way. But maybe that is not the right approach?