Is it possible to use this (or similar external hard drives) to store and view movies, connected directly to a smart tv by the usb connection? null

Question

Ichinisan · Accepted Answer

It's possible, but you'd likely need to make sure the drive is formatted with a file system your TV understands.

Pretty much all of them support FAT-32. Windows arbitrarily doesn't give an option to use FAT-32 when formatting drives / partitions greater than 32GB capacity. Microsoft/Windows is really just trying to force their proprietary NTFS file system on you, even in situations where FAT-32 would work fine. The actual partition size limit of FAT-32 is 2TB (2,048 GB), which a third-party formatting utility can do just fine. So that means you'd still basically need to make multiple partitions to use all the capacity of your drive and have a file system that the TV can read. It's possible some TVs may be confused by that, but most would handle it fine.

exFAT extends the established FAT file system to overcome some of its inherent limitations. For a drive with this capacity, exFAT is probably the best file system to use if you want to use the drive with your TV and other non-Windows devices. Among non-Windows devices, it has much better support than NTFS. You can make a single large 8TB partition formatted with the exFAT file system and it's very likely your TV will be able to use it. If your TV doesn't work with that, make a 2TB partition and format it with the FAT-32 file system.

Kyle · Answer

Yes but your smart TV most likely can only read up to 4TB. 8TB is a lot and most tv's cant handle it. Its possible your tv may not read it at all because of this, or it may only read some of it.

Anuther1 · Answer

Yes, as long as your tv recognizes the file formats that you have saved your movies to. My tv recognizes most formats.

ironman52885 · Answer

I think it all depends on your tv, but this drive should work for that. It does have an external power cord though.

Highlandlassie · Answer

Yes, of course, with this particular HDD you will need to also plug it into power as well.

Fayeme · Answer

From my understanding, it will depend more on the TV you are using, if this size is too big where it doesn't recognize it.

Answer

Look into running a plex server. you’ll have much more flexibility

Aria · Answer

I don't believe you can directly connect this or any other Hard Drive to your TV. You must use a computer with the hard drive. If your TV has the capability, you can stream video from your computer to the TV wirelessly through a good web connection. However, it can be challenging to get this to work (at least with my LG OLED). 

You could also use an extra long HDMI cable and connect it from the computer to the TV.

And, the best way is to transfer the movies from the computer/ hard drive to a Tivo DVR. Then, you can use better, more complete DVR functions (rewind, fast forward, etc.)

DougB · Answer

I doubt that you can connect a drive to smart tv's and download to them. You might be able to download thru a computer via HDMI connection but direct, no.

“Is it possible to use this (or similar external hard drives) to store and view movies, connected directly to a smart tv by the usb connection?”

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