General format - USB drive question

[ZDevilInside]

Generally speaking, what format should you use for a 32GB USB flash drive to be able to play videos from on a TV? I am referring to plugging the USB drive into the TV's USB port. What is the "most common" format of the drive that can be used for this purpose - FAT32, EXFAT or NTFS?

 

[Bolosun]

FAT32, followed very closely by NTFS. Try FAT32 1st. Like NTFS, exFAT has very large limits on file and partition sizes., allowing you to store files much larger than the 4 GB allowed by FAT32.

 

[Sloppy Bob]

You may also run into issues with both video and audio codecs as well.

TVs make very poor media streamers. It's why things like the Apple TV4K, Nvidia Shield, Zappitti and android boxes exist.

For example, last years or the year before Samsung TVs stopped supporting DTS or higher, audio. If you tried to play it back, you didn't even get a picture, even if the video codec was supported.