Are there several USB drives plugged in at once? If you have several USB drives plugged in at the same time your TV might not recognise some of them.

As well as facilitating a connection that may not otherwise have been possible, this device may have an in-built browser that could make navigating your files and using them easier on your TV.

Can I connect through another device? You may be able to connect your external hard drive to your TV through another device such as a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) that connects to your TV via an HDMI output cable.

This can be done using a free program like the TCL Media Player. If this is the case, to get your files to work you can easily convert them into a file format your TV will recognise.

This could be the reason you can’t play certain files if you do end up connecting.

Does my hard drive contain file types not recognised by my TV? It’s common for TVs to not recognise all file types, or at least as many as your computer will.

This is the USB port you should be using.

Am I plugging the USB in correctly? Most TVs have several USB ports, however there is usually only one named USB/HDD.

If your TV still won’t recognise your external hard drive, try checking the following: If you are currently shopping for a hard drive that can be used to play media through your TV’s USB port, try to stick to drives that are less than 2TB in size, that way no space will be wasted if you need to convert the drive’s format. That being said, there is a nifty way to game the system. Unfortunately, it’s a necessary one for the moment if you’ve bought a large-capacity external drive and are looking to use it as a media repository for a TV. Again, all this isn’t an ideal solution for a 3TB or 4TB drive.

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