How to share a movie file over Wi-Fi to Android TV?

matchatriplecheese

I would like to watch .MKV movies with softcoded subtitles over Wi-Fi (Huawei HG8245Q2) from my laptop (Qualcomm Atheros QCA8172 Fast Ethernet rev 10, Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter rev 01) on my Android TV (Skyworth HY4001).

Not every app from Google Play can be installed on my Android TV (e.g. KDE Connect or AirDroid cannot be installed). I tried "VLC media player --> Playback --> Renderer" but chromecasting does not support subtitles and is laggy.

Is there an easy way for a layman to stream a movie or download a movie file?

Solarmass

You can try to install Kodi (or VLC player) on your Android TV and add remote folder as video source. You should somehow share that folder with the movie, check samba-share I guess.

Also check https://jellyfin.org and https://www.plex.tv

vyzle

I use Plex from the Flatpak. It's kept up to date and works extremely well.

It plays mkv and will even, if the movie files are libraried (is that a word?) correctly, find subs for you.

It's a bit sensitive to file naming conventions and I use Tiny Media Manager to help with that.

https://www.tinymediamanager.org/

Edit: forgot to mention, Plex was available to install on my smart TV, so setup was negligible on that end.
Another Edit! - Plex is via Snap not Flatpak.