LG SmartShare

Getting a film from a computer onto a television in the same house ought to be simple, and the standard built for exactly that has been quietly frustrating people for years. LG SmartShare is the computer half of that arrangement for LG televisions, making chosen folders visible so the television can browse and play what is in them.

The LG SmartShare direction matters and it catches people. You do not send anything from the computer. The computer offers, the television goes looking, and the remote control is what you use to find the film.

Understanding what the television is actually looking at explains almost every complaint about this software.

The television reads a database, not your folders

Here is the LG SmartShare mechanism, and knowing it turns the most common failure into an obvious consequence.

The computer software scans the folders you chose and builds a catalogue of what it found. When the television connects, it browses that catalogue rather than your actual folders.

So the listing the television shows is only as current as the last scan. Files deleted weeks ago keep appearing, films added yesterday are absent, and playing something that no longer exists produces an error rather than an explanation.

When the catalogue stops refreshing, which people report happening after years of working correctly, the software appears broken while the folders themselves are fine. The listing is stale and nothing about the interface says so.

Clearing that properly means removing the software and deleting the data it leaves in hidden locations, since an ordinary uninstall leaves the catalogue behind for the reinstall to pick up again.

Servers that rescan reliably avoid the whole problem, and Plex Media Player keeps its library current without being nursed.

Why the television cannot see the computer

The second recurring LG SmartShare failure has several causes, and they are all outside the software.

Routers that do not handle multicast traffic prevent the discovery from working at all, which the maker documents rather than hiding. Security software on the computer blocks the traffic just as effectively, and a tunnel client running on the computer will do the same.

Then there is the trap somebody described after a system update. Drive permissions were reset, and the television could see only the default video folder rather than the one they had actually configured, with nothing indicating why.

LG SmartShare works better wired than wireless for good reason, and the higher wireless band matters for anything at full high definition, which reads as excessive advice until playback starts stuttering.

Turning the arrangement around so a computer or a small box does the playing sidesteps all of it, and a media centre that plays the files itself and sends a finished picture removes the television’s format list from the question.

The subtitle situation is properly poor

This deserves its own section, because LG SmartShare is inconsistent here in a way that wastes evenings.

Separate subtitle files in the most common format frequently do not appear at all, with the button greyed out on the television while the computer software cheerfully reports that subtitles are available. The older two-file subtitle format usually works. Subtitles embedded inside the video file sometimes work and sometimes do not.

The maker’s own documentation is clearer than the software, stating that the standard does not support internal subtitles or multiple audio tracks, and that a separate subtitle file must sit in the same folder as the video with exactly the same name.

Anybody who watches subtitled material regularly should treat this as the deciding factor rather than a detail.

Codec support belongs to the television

The other half of the LG SmartShare format problem, and it explains files that refuse to play despite being fine on the computer.

Nothing is converted in transit. The file goes across as it is and the television either understands it or does not, so the supported formats are the television’s list rather than the software’s.

That list has specific edges. Certain video profiles above a particular level are refused, some encoding features cause failure, and a few audio formats work from a connected drive but not across the network. A file that plays perfectly in a computer player can be rejected without a useful message.

VLC Media Player will tell you what is actually inside a file that refuses to play, which is the first step in working out which constraint you hit.

What people use instead

Being direct about LG SmartShare, because the advice on forums where people own these televisions is unusually blunt.

The software is described there as a server for the standard that happens to be a poor one, and the consistent recommendation is to replace it rather than troubleshoot it. That is not enthusiast snobbery, it comes from people who own the same televisions and gave up on it.

A server built for this standard rather than bundled with a television does the same job properly, scanning folders you nominate and presenting them the same way, with a free version covering the ordinary case.

Conclusion

LG SmartShare does something properly convenient when it works, which is putting your own films on the television without moving files onto a drive first. The setup is short and nothing needs installing on the television itself.

The trouble is that everything difficult about it sits outside the interface. A stale catalogue looks like broken software, subtitles fail for reasons the software does not report, and the format list belongs to the television rather than to the program you are configuring. People who own these televisions and hit those walls generally replace it with a server built for the job, which is the honest recommendation to pass on.