Why does my HD tv not recognize my USB storage device?

[martinijo]

Hello,
Can someone tell me why I cannot play .avi films on my newly formatted external drive through the USB slot of my HD tv? It is a Seagate Momentus 80gb internal drive put into a case. I have been plugging in a 2gb mp3 player and watching the same films without any problems.
An explanation would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[runningbot]

Have you checked to make sure the drive and the enclosure are working properly? AKA: Plugged them into a PC?

What are the specs on your set?

 

[dethsite2]

I would say the limitation of your cable box is likely to be OS and hardware related..

most usb interfaces on cable boxed are turned off by default If active, it will likely only function as a usb cable modem..

coming from the OS pov I would say anything other than fat32 or format derivative unix/linux will likely not be see as it will likely have a unix/linux OS...

you'll have to look at the formatting guide via the stb to see if stb supports usb hard drives.

 

[martinijo]

Have you checked to make sure the drive and the enclosure are working properly? AKA: Plugged them into a PC?

What are the specs on your set?

Thanks for the reply.
The harddrive is working on my laptop and on a friend's, ( though it took me ages to work out how to format it) I was just surprised that the same films were fine played through the little plug in player whereas the tv would not recognise the harddrive. The TV is a Technika DV3-T HD ready thing from Tesco.

 

[martinijo]

I would say the limitation of your cable box is likely to be OS and hardware related..

most usb interfaces on cable boxed are turned off by default If active, it will likely only function as a usb cable modem..

coming from the OS pov I would say anything other than fat32 or format derivative unix/linux will likely not be see as it will likely have a unix/linux OS...

you'll have to look at the formatting guide via the stb to see if stb supports usb hard drives.

Sorry I am basically a noob and don't know what stb stands for.
Can I reformat the Harddrive to fat32 or is this not possible?

 

[jollyjacktar]

Sorry I am basically a noob and don't know what stb stands for.
Can I reformat the Harddrive to fat32 or is this not possible?

I believe that once it is formatted to NTFS you cannot change it back to FAT32.Right click the drive letter and under 'Properties'select the 'general'tab...this will indicate what format the drive is in...You should know that if a drive is formatted as FAT32 it will not accept any files greater than 4gb.This limits you to not adding any HD movie files to watch on your TV!A good bet is to purchase a seperate media player and use this as an interface between HDD and TV...they are relatively inexpensive these days...under £20 on Amazon....could save you a lot of messing around!
Regards
JollyJackTar

 

[ma77506]

Hi,

Mine is already fat32 but it still does not work on my tv. What should I do?

 

[jcoultas98]

Necroing a 2 year old thread isn't specifically useful. You will get more responses if you ask a question relevant to this year, and your more individual situation.

 

[Bharat Nagpal]

Hi,

Mine is already fat32 but it still does not work on my tv. What should I do?

All LCD/LED Tv are coming with USB ports but these port can only has a little amount of voltage and can only detects the chip based storage. USB External Hard disk need more power to run or detect. So you can't connect a USB External storage drive to you tv for playing movies or songs

 

[Bharat Nagpal]

Hi,

Mine is already fat32 but it still does not work on my tv. What should I do?

All LCD/LED Tv are coming with USB ports but these port can only has a little amount of voltage and can only detects the chip based storage. USB External Hard disk need more power to run or detect. So you can't connect a USB External storage drive to you tv for playing movies or songs

 

[agermanucf]

Hi,

Mine is already fat32 but it still does not work on my tv. What should I do?

All LCD/LED Tv are coming with USB ports but these port can only has a little amount of voltage and can only detects the chip based storage. USB External Hard disk need more power to run or detect. So you can't connect a USB External storage drive to you tv for playing movies or songs

I have a 3 month old Toshiba LCD TV and it recognizes my external 1TB HD just fine. But I believe the problem is the format of the drive you're using. Mine was FAT32 but the 4GB transfer limit was a problem as there were some movies I could not put on the drive. I converted it to NTFS, and now the TV won't read it (although my laptop reads it perfectly).

 

[Rangarajan Venkatachari]

Hello,
Can someone tell me why I cannot play .avi films on my newly formatted external drive (a Seagate Momentus 80gb internal drive put into a case)through the USB slot of my HD tv? I have been plugging in a 2gb mp3 player and watching the same films without any problems.
An explanation would be appreciated. Thanks.

Hi
I am Rangarajan from India. In fact the solution is very simple.

Your external hard disk is formatted in NTFS. All USB drive format is FAT32. Usually, you can't format more than 32GB in FAT32 format. To over come this, there is a free software which allows you to format in FAT32, any hard drive more than 32GB. The link for that software is : http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/
for my 720GB Maxtor 4 Plus. it took nearly 6 hours to format in FAT32. But, once formatted it works like a breeze. This solution I got it from this site. The entire credit goes to them. Please read the thinlineblh December 9, 2010 at 17:41:14, comment below:

http://www.computing.net/answers/hardware/wd-elements-to-dvd-player-with-usb/68165.html

Please read the following also, which also I got it from the net, I don't remember the site, very useful suggestion (may God bless that person with peace and propserity) and will help you, how to use your external hard drive in FAT32 mode:

This was probably the scenario were the USB interface on the DVD player became corrupted. I found that I had to power on the player and hard drive in the following order to avoid this continually happening:
• DVD player ON
• Plug in or turn HDD ON
• Watch stuff here
• Unplug or turn HDD OFF
• DVD player OFF

I hope this helps.

Cheers!

 

[Banu22elos]

This was probably the scenario were the USB interface on the DVD player became corrupted.

 

[thruth]

I too have just bought a new 500gb external hard drive, its format is NTFS & exFAT (I am using windows8), wanted to store my movies to playback on set top box through TV...I wasted so much time in downloading free software to convert it and no change..SO here is the success story.....I connected the external hard drive to set top box (via usb),went to menu...usb..select format...and there you will see the usb highlighted, select OK format.. & it formatted the external hard drive.....I transferred my movie files onto the external hard drive from my computer...plugged it into the usb on the set top box...AND THERE WERE ALL MY MOVIE FILES ..and tested to play and they did..(the files were not recognized by the set top box until I formatted the drive as I have mentioned)...I wish I had read that simple solution on the net, would have saved me some angry moments..and I am 69 years of age!! ...of course you may have a later model set top box..but following the menu should take you through the same process. GOOD LUCK!!! OH! by the way....make sure your external hard drive is empty to format it..(I was careful to keep the movie files on the PC until I found a solution)

 

[abhishek1681]

Dear Rangarajan,

It's work for me....

Thank you very much for your post...

 

[Wandriska]

any one know of a MAC version for http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/?

ta!

 

[tomkeshimana]

yes i have tried that it works perfectly on my PC

 

[etcetera70]

Hi,

Mine is already fat32 but it still does not work on my tv. What should I do?

All LCD/LED Tv are coming with USB ports but these port can only has a little amount of voltage and can only detects the chip based storage. USB External Hard disk need more power to run or detect. So you can't connect a USB External storage drive to you tv for playing movies or songs

I think it is on the formattingof the hard drive. My 500GB was working well with my samsung led tv and i can watch downloaded movies just fine until i decided to reformat my drive. I tried NTFS, Mac, FAT32,but still it can not be detected by the led.

 

[Julflorida]

Hi, |I bough yesterday a Vizio smart tv 60"m I connected an external HD Toshiba usb2m first movie in AVI work then I tried to open all the other MKV and nothing appear like they are empty !

If you finally get a solution please let me know

 

[BlythGav]

I was having similar problems with my Samsung series 8 tv my drives were working fine then one crashed and I had to format it and it never worked after that then I discovered I'd formatted the drive in FAT so needed to format in NTFS and it's working a treat ... And as for the MKV files not working I also had this problem with some certain files but not all MKV's I simply did a software update on to and they've all worked a treat so far so try update and if that doesn't work your t.v may just not support MKV playback try getting a media player from Amazon they're tiny and cheap and will play anything... Like this one : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sumvision-Cyclone-Micro-Player-Adaptor-black/dp/B0052X04MO/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1421920945&sr=1-1&keywords=media+player