Setting up a home network: Laptop, Wi-Fi, Router, LAN, HDD, USB, and TV

Hey everyone,
I’m looking for some advice if anyone here has dealt with this before or might have a workaround...

Here’s the deal:

Right now, I watch movies using an external hard drive plugged directly into my TV via USB, and it works perfectly fine.
The problem is the sheer hassle of it all. I want to avoid the constant cycle of unplugging the drive from the TV, plugging it into my laptop, waiting for files to copy, and then trekking back to the TV to plug it in again every single time.

I’m hunting for a solution that looks something like this:

An external drive that stays plugged into the TV via USB, but also connects via Ethernet to my home router (I’m using a Netgear router). Ideally, once I download a movie onto my laptop over the Wi-Fi, I could just push it through the router straight onto that external drive, and then hit play on the TV. Essentially, I want my current setup, just with a way to feed the movies to that drive over LAN instead of manual swapping.

Is something like this even a thing? I’ve read bits and pieces suggesting you can't have both LAN and USB active at the same time without specialized software, which sounds like too much of a headache for me. I’m also trying to avoid adding more players or extra remote controls to the mix—my coffee table is already cluttered enough. This seems like the most elegant path if it’s actually doable.

I also stumbled upon the idea of a wireless drive, maybe something like a Western Digital My Cloud, which seemed like it might fit the bill. Has anyone here actually used one for this kind of thing?

Thanks in advance. 😁

Honestly, your best bet is just grabbing an iOS smart TV stick. You plug it right into the set, and suddenly your TV basically turns into a massive smartphone screen. I usually just leave my hard drive plugged into my laptop, download whatever movies I want onto it, and then share that entire drive over the network so I can stream everything directly from the TV without any buffering issues. As for that whole thing about having too many remotes lying around... I’m just going to let that one slide.

So, we’re talking about direct streaming straight to the TV then? My set has Wi-Fi, and I actually already use something pretty similar through a Plex media server, but the whole thing can be a bit finicky—signal drops, buffering, you name it. It feels a little risky. Honestly, I think it’d be much more reliable if I just had an external hard drive plugged directly into the TV itself. That’s the kind of setup I’m looking for...