Can or Can’t I use an external HDD to play movies on my TV?
January 27th, 2020
So I just found a nice harddrive in my house and I want to use it to store (a part of) my movie collection on it. So I thought “Well, just buy a casing for the 3,5″ drive, plug in the USB cord in the ext. drive and the TV and BAM; I can watch movies on my tv, stored on the drive”.
However.. I’ve also read that it isn’t that simple and I should buy a mediaplayer casing and plug in the hard drive in it.
So.. What is wrong and what is correct? What is the best advice. Why do I need a mediaplayer housing for the drive to play movies on my TV, since I can from a USB thumb drive, why shouldnt I from an external hard drive.
Can somebody please explain me where the difference lies between a media player and a external hard drive? They both got my movies stored on and both will be attached via a USB 3.0 cable.
Thanks!
I can’t answer the main question without knowing the full model of your TV!
As far as the differences between an HD Media Player and an External HDD goes, They’re
completely different! An HD Media Player is a small box that connects to your TV (Usually by HDMI) and is especially made to play all common video files (It got decoding hardware built-in!) so it does all the work and just transmits it to your TV, While an External HDD is just that, An HDD!
But the two go hand in hand (You must use an External HDD or a flash drive along with an HMP)
HMP’s don’t have internal HDDs (As they’re made to play user-provided content – So there’s no point!)
Since you can play movies from a USB thumbdrive, it should work OK from an external HDD..
I messed up, hit the wrong button
This post has been reviewed and no action was taken - Ste#.