First of all. I hate working with computer names in a network instead of IP's.
I rip all of my movie discs to my desktop, as I have plenty of disc space. When I want to watch a movie in the bedroom, I fire up the PS3 and go. Every once in a while a movie triggers the Cineavia bullcrap on the PS3 and until not too long ago there was a way to get around it. Not anymore. Stupid Sony. I bought the goddamn movie. Being the nerd that I am, I figured, I grab my laptop and stream it through that. Go to the desktop, set my movie hdd on share, go upstairs with the laptop, and use this site to guide me through
Setting up a Windows share in Linux*.
After 45 minutes of white knuckling in the bedroom (the gf** has been snoring away for 20 minutes already) still nothing.
She wakes up and tells me to go downstairs as I start to swear.
Go downstairs, give the whole "computer names" thing a swift kick and just use the IP. Still nothing. Restart Windows pc. Moment of success. Set all share setting back to normal, reboot again, set share setting again, reboot. FINALLY a connection.
Reboot laptop. No more files in the folder. Derp. Let's Google for a permanent solution.
Wiki Ubuntu to the rescue. ***
Fire up VLC, start the movie. Laptop can't handle a ripped bluray.
*Having Linux Lite sure has its limitations, every other "special" handling requires an install as it isn't there in Lite. (what's in a name?)
** I'm going to gently but persuasive force her to get on with getting all of her important files collected and moved to the Linux Desktop, as I am waaaaaaaaaaaay past the point of being done with Windows 10.
***I forgot to add the /folder to the share thus the desktop of my laptop was filled with all the files in the share.
(use this post for having a Linux machine access a folder on a windows machine)