Windows – Does CIFS / SMB use multiple connections

No, it is not true. Windows uses SMB as its primary file sharing protocol, and includes SMB/CIFS client capabilities in almost all Windows versions since Windows for Workgroups 3.1. (Microsoft also distributed stand-alone clients for earlier versions of Windows and even MS-DOS, named "Microsoft Network Client" or "Microsoft LAN Manager" depending on versions.)

The reason your PC's browser doesn't see the shares on the STB may be an issue to do with workgroup names: when using the old "NetBIOS" network browsing protocol, Windows only displays hosts within the same workgroup, although other hosts can still be accessed by name. (Note that network browsing is not part of SMB, and is not required for SMB to work.)

Try accessing the SMB server directly by its name. Open a command-prompt window and try a command like:

• net view \\servername to view visible shares;

• dir \\servername\sharename to list a share's contents;

• net use s: \\servername\sharename to map a share to a drive letter.

Also try changing servername to the STB's IPv4 address.

I'd recommend mounting it via autofs. This is a service that will mount a directory on demand (for example if you cd into it or ls it) and unmount it automatically after a user defined timeout.

• Install the autofs package for your distribution (by the way, remember to include your distro in your questions since an answer's details may depend on it).

• Add the following to /etc/auto.master

  /media/[my_server] /etc/auto.[my_server]
  

  Where /media/[my_server] is the mount point of the share.

• Create a file /etc/autofs/auto.[my_server] with this line:

  [any_name] -fstype=cifs,[other_options] ://[remote_server]/[share_name]
  

For more information see here and here.