Can Apple TV stream video from an external server using SMB or FTP protocol with external subtitles? I am seriously considering moving from my Android TV-based player to Apple TV player, because my current solution fails completely on playing / streaming videos from from an external server through SMB or FTP protocol with external subtitles.

Some software players (i.e. VLC) can browse network shares (some can't), but all of them fails on opening external subtitles, i.e. stored in the .srt or .txt file with exactly the same filename as corresponding video file. It is only possible to display subtitles, if they are embedded into video files that supports embedded subtitles (i.e. MKV) or subtitles downloaded from OpenSubtitles.org.

This is especially weird, because happens only on SMB / FTP protocol. When using exactly the same player on local disk, everything works just like a charm.

I'd like to ask how does it work in case of Apple TV?

While searching the Internet, I managed to learn that Apple TV can play content from local network (don't know, if using SMB or FTP protocol), using VLC or some other players. But I can't find any certain, confirmed information about fetching subtitles from. srt, .txt etc. files stored in exactly the same source and using exactly the same protocol (local share using SMB or external share using FTP) as used for fetching main video file.

Can anyone shed some light on this problem? Thank you.
Yes, this is possible using third party apps such as for example the VLC media player for Apple TV.

Note that you need a fourth generation Apple TV or newer.