Smart TV with USB - what format do HDD's need to be

jimbo45 · 22 Sep 2016

Hi there

Query on playing media on a smart TV directly by using the USB connection.

Most Smart TV's I believe have some variant of Linux - probably Android based - built in OS. A lot of the new ones have provisions for playing media directly via the USB connector(s).

Anybody know if the OS on the TV is intelligent enough to detect the file system or will it only recognize specific file systems.

I'm going over to a colleagues place to play some video -- but rather than set up a remote connection it's a lot easier to take a small portable USB device - however it's formatted EXT4 (a Linux file system). Will the TV recognize it or will it expect a Windows type HDD (NTFS etc).

I don't have a smart TV available to test this on so I'd be glad if anybody who has got one could answer this question. The relevant TV will be one of the newer Samsung series.

Cheers
jimbo

CountMike · 22 Sep 2016

On all smart or not too smart TVs I tried USB drive they would read Fat32 and most read exFat systems. Writing to them may be another story. Just beware, some like my friends 51" Philips formatted one USB stick to some crazy system without warning and took quite a fight to partition and format it again.

Bree · 22 Sep 2016

My experience mirrors CountMike's. Fat32 is the lowest common denominator, recognised by all SmartTVs and PVRs I've tried it in. Be aware of Fat32's 4GB file size limit though.

PS: you may also want to take some alternative video formats in case your original one isn't in a format the TV supports - mp4 seems to be accepted by most TVs.