Thinking of hacking pogoplug pro and putting samba on it - advantages?

[yoda313]

The other day I bought a pogoplug pro for around 40.00 on discount. Its a hardware nas. You just plug in a usb harddrive and hook it up via lan to your router and its good to go.

However a major drawback is it won't recognize any video inside a mkv file. It seems to work just fine for other containers. It streamed smoothly to my xbox 360 and ps3 (both wired).

I"ve read about hacking it and putting the linux server samba on it. What are the advantages of it?

The pogoplug does work it just seems limited however.

One thing I haven't tried yet is with h264 in a mkv to remux it to mp4. It should do that just fine.

[vhelp]

yoda313, i just picked up one myself. i have not connected it since i have a lot of things going on at the moment.

i asked the sales people for advice and things but as usual they don't always know much. anyway.

i was wondering, (once connected) how do you access your videos ? assuming you have to open a web browser,

do you type in http://url or is it, file:///c:\video_files\

how does that work ? thanks.

ps: i have the pogoplug series 4 model, not the pro, unless they are the same.

[yoda313]

I have the pro - it was an older model they were discounting to make room on the shelves. I don't know what the differences are if any.

i was wondering, (once connected) how do you access your videos ? assuming you have to open a web browser,

Via computer yes - via tablet you use the pogoplug app - which actually does work on mips tablets but you have to acquire it elsewhere - at least I can't get my tablet on google play to download it directly. I believe there is a way to make it a networkable drive so it appears like any other drive you'd have attached to your computer. I haven't dug in enough to know for sure.

As far as hacking it I've decided to hold off for now. SInce I can only play spec'd videos on the tablet I don't really have a need right now to do nas'ing of mkv files. I"ll be converting those so they are playable on my tablet. THen I can just use the normal pogoplug interface that way - being converted to h264 in mp4 files that is.

Down the line I might consider hacking it or getting a more serious nas if and when I get a more powerful tablet that would need unadulterated file serving.

Edit - the my pogoplug website is a browser based access point. It shows all the folders on it and you access it that way.

[TreeTops]

Yoda, can you play mt2s files on your tablet?

[yoda313]

Yoda, can you play mt2s files on your tablet?

Nope sd only. And relatively restrictive sd to boot.

I think the pogoplug streaming capabilities are relatively limited in its non hacked form. Of course you can still transfer any file from the nas drives. Its just that the "unapproved" formats won't be recognized as streamable even if they are valid video files.

Please note this is for the black pogoplug pro model I have. THere may be differences in other models, I dont' know for sure. Also I have the stock firmware on the unit I haven't upgraded yet if it is upgradeable - offically upgradeable that is.

Still for regular file transfer use it should be very capable to go from point a to point b.