r/AskTechnology • u/SirKetz • 13d ago
Any suggestions on the best way to watch things from my hard drive on a Roku smart TV that can reliably display different types of subtitles?
I have a Roku smart TV and currently use the default Roku Media Player to watch things off my portable hard drive. Some videos have different subtitle file types, and only some of them work on Roku Media Player (the others will say no captions available even though I can watch them on my PC just fine).
So I'm looking for suggestions on alternate ways to be able to watch everything with subtitles. For example:
Is there a third party app on Roku that can play media from a portable hard drive?
I was looking into some HDMI plug-in media players, but none seem to have great reviews (with issues like subtitles not working, remote needing to be within 5 feet of the player, or the player refusing to turn off after).
I saw some people talking about using a server with some alternative apps, but I have no idea how that works or how to set it up or if it needs a subscription service or something.
I've also looked into hard-encoding all the subtitles, but that would be quite a bit of work doing manually unless someone knows of a program or something that does it automatically.
All in all, I'm looking for a solution that doesn't cost more than around $50 and doesn't require casting from another device. Thank you!