@MetaByte wrote:
I do, however, have family photos and home videos that we occasionally watch, and with all the bad actors out there, I hate to have these shared with other apps.
But remember, the bad actors are looking for ways to make (steal) money. Your personal photos and videos do not provide them with anything that they could sell to anyone, so there's really nothing to worry about there.
If you want total security, then you can do what @atxchip suggests with a portable media player that isn't connected to any network.
There is of course a second method that doesn't mean you need a different player. Roku devices (as well as most other networked media players) support media playback from a DLNA server. If you have a Windows PC on your network, you already have a DLNA server available, as the Windows Media Player will also provide a server on the network. In my humble opinion the Windows DLNA server is terrible, as it provides almost no control over what it can do. If all your media is already supported by Roku devices (which they would be if they will play from a USB drive) then the Windows server is sufficient. But if you'd like more control, or the ability to watch media that the Roku doesn't support natively, then you need a better DLNA server. Fortunately, there's plenty available for free on the Internet. I support Serviio (https://www.serviio.org) but there are certainly others. I know Serviio works well with Roku devices because I'm the author of the profiles that are included with Serviio for Roku devices.
The advantage to using a media server such as a DLNA server is that it makes your media available to any supported device on your home network. So almost any "Smart" TV, Blu Ray player, or streaming media player (like a Roku) can access your media. You don't need to move a drive between TVs to watch something on a different set. But it's also extremely secure because the DLNA protocol will not route over a public network like the Internet, so no one can hack your DLNA server and retrieve the data via DLNA.
I have almost 6500 video files on my media server, mostly ripped DVD and Blu Ray movies and TV shows. I can watch any of them from any TV in my house, since I have a Roku or Nvidia Shield on every one of them. The TVs themselves can also stream from my server, although the user interface on them is terrible, which is one of the reasons I got a media player in the first place. 😄
Dan
Roku Community Streaming Expert
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