How to Play Movies from a Thumb Drive on Your Smart TV

Most smart TVs have a USB port where you can plug in a thumb drive to watch movies. The process is straightforward: plug your thumb drive into your TV's USB port and wait for a pop-up message to appear. If no message shows up, press the "Input" button on your remote and look for the thumb drive option.

Troubleshooting

In some cases, the TV will not detect the thumb drive. This usually happens because TV manufacturers haven't agreed on a universal standard, making some TVs very picky about how the thumb drive is formatted. While we use the widely adopted ExFat format (which works on the most devices and with both Windows and Mac computers), your TV might need a different format like NTFS or FAT32. Our clients with LG TVs have reported this issue often.

Your Options

You have a few options if you find yourself in this situation:

• Try another TV: If possible, test the thumb drive on a different TV in your household. Different brands often handle formats differently, so another TV may not be as picky.
• Buy a USB player: Consider purchasing an inexpensive USB player device ($30-$40). These devices guarantee playback on any TV, including older models, and provide a Netflix-like experience for watching your movies. They're also a great option for playing movies at a relative's house where the TV setup is unknown. We have a guide on USB players here.
• Connect a laptop to your TV: If you have a laptop, you can connect it to your TV using an HDMI cable and play the movies directly from your laptop. We have a guide on how to do that here.
• If all else fails, we can create a separate thumb drive formatted specifically for your TV (additional fees may apply). You'll need to provide the brand and model number of your TV, or send a picture of the back of the TV so we can look up its specifications. If you're formatting a drive yourself, never reformat your current USB drive as this will erase all your files. Instead, purchase a new drive, format it according to the TV's requirements, and copy your files over.

The most important thing to remember is that if the thumb drive doesn't work right away, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your movies—it’s just about finding the right way to play them on your specific TV.

A Final Technical Note

We’ve chosen to stick with ExFat as our standard format because it offers the best compatibility across the widest range of devices, especially computers where you might want to view or copy your files. While we understand this creates occasional TV compatibility issues, switching to a more limited format like NTFS would cause more problems than it solves, as many of our clients use Mac computers, which can’t reliably read NTFS drives. We believe it’s better to offer solutions for the few TVs that don’t work with ExFat rather than create problems for everyone trying to access their files on their computers.