DVD storage and playback

Hello,

I am looking to store a couple hundred home videos onto a hard drive in order to store them away to save space and be able to watch on my tv and I am unsure of the best way to acheive what I'd like to do. I would like to store them in such a way that they can be browsed through on the tv, selected and played on the tv.

I have an iMac running Mountain lion, an iPad, iPhone, Apple tv, a samsung non smart tv, a PS3 and an xBox 360.

I know I can store them onto iTunes and with home sharing, watch them through the apple tv, but I don't want to have the Mac on each time I want to watch a video reducing it's lifespan.
Is there a way I can use a NAS drive, something like the western digital my cloud (which fits my budget!) through any of my devices in order to select and watch through my tv?

Thank you
Matt

I know you can connect a regular external drive to the xBox 360 and play them through the xBox onto the tv, as I do that here. You just need the files in .m4v format. And the drive should be formatted FAT, which means no single file size larger than 4GB, I don't know if the xBox 360 will accept exFAT formatted drives.

Thanks Bob,
Unfortunately there will be quite a few over 4gb.
I have managed to find out that WD my cloud drives use an app called Plex Media Server, although some info suggests that Plex can only be used with mirror or pro drives, but this info is a couple of years old, I'm wondering if the standard my clouds now accept Plex.
Plex sounds like it is ticking my boxes, menu screen, no Mac on during playback etc.

but I don't want to have the Mac on each time I want to watch a video reducing it's lifespan.

Click to expand...

Then I dare say you may want to just shut it down now and just not use it.

But seriously, computers like to do things and be On, and shutting down and turning them On/Off/On often is often a way to speed up their demise.

BTW: If you have a PVR type recorder/player, I'm told some have the ability to use a connected storage drive with the movies on them. But I do not know the details nor of the movie format needed.