USB Stick/Drive Problem

[Poromies]

I tried unsuccessfully for several weeks to play home movies from USB on my late 2016 Bravia 55” smart (?)/Android TV. The same USB drive worked perfectly on a small Samsung in a spare bedroom. My USB devices were formatted as FAT32. Movie files were all less than 2Gb and were in formats listed by Sony as acceptable (mostly mp4).
I took my USB device to the retailer where I bought the TV (PC World, Milton Keynes, UK). They could not get my USB device to work with a single Sony TV in their store. Not one. They then tested the same USB device with Samsung and LG TVs which worked perfectly. The store’s Sony “expert” could not offer any advice other than resetting my TV to factory specs; this was meaningless as the Sony TVs in the store had the same problem. I called PC World “help” who, after I had waited for ages, claimed never to have heard of this problem and offered no solution or useful ideas.

I phoned Sony help who said USB devices must be formatted as ExFat.  That was it.  No other comment or help.
I created a new 16Gb USB “stick” formatted as ExFat. That worked!!!!! I then reformated a 2Tb external drive as ExFat. That did not work.  I reformated the 2Tb drive again using the reformat facility in the TV’s settings menu, which created a FAT32 drive, not ExFat as advised by the Sony Help line.  Anyway, after reformatting through the television the external drive worked, but the maximum file size it will accept is around 2Gb, not 4Gb as shown in this Sony video guide. I will next try a 1Tb external drive formatted as ExFat.
The picture and sound quality (through Sony sound bar) are superb, but the USB experience and lack of support has left me seriously underwhelmed by Sony.  A great deal of time-consuming messing around has been required to get my Sony to read USBs. It is pretty frustrating when other TV brands work immediately, and quite frankly unacceptable for a top brand like Sony.  The lack of help is also quite appalling, and the available manuals and YouTube videos appear to be incorrect with respect to drive and media format and size.

Can any Sony experts or fellow Bravia Android users comment or offer any advice on a simple way to play media from USB, and how to overcome file size limitations???????

[gcristian]

Hello,

I have the same problem.

I have a Sony Bravia KD55XE8577. Recently when I tried to use a 32 gb 3.0 USB Memory Stick to play an mkv movie(some like 13 GB), my TV would not recognize the memory at all.

I have 3 usb ports: 2 for 2.0 and 1 for 3.0. Neither of them have detected my usb memory.

I have tried the same on a 2017 Samsung Smart TV. No issues, the usb memory auto-played and i was able to watch the movie.

I called for Sony Support. They asked me about the latest version of firmware. I told them, I have it. Anyway I have the autoupdate activated. They told me to format the usb memory differently.

I formatted the usb memory to other formats: the issue was the same.

I used another usb memory and that one was recognized by my TV.

I really do not see what is the issue here.

Waiting for someone to help me, as I cannot understand this poor quality for Sony products and support services.

Thank you in advance.

[Daviy7]

So I have currently a 32GB Lexar usb drive among others that I've used and nothing works. So after countless tries this one Finally worked. I used a program called Rufus for formatting. The partition scheme was MBR for UEFI (I tried for BIOS and UEFI but that didn't work), File system was exFAT, I don't think cluster size matters but mines was default which was 32 kb, Then did a quick format and voila, my only working key. OREO looks nice and much quicker. I haven't tested if any USB will work after the update but I will test it and reply. Good luck everyone.

[nelsonjamesluke]

Thank you so much. This fully worked a charm.

Have not been able to use Auto Update on my KD-65XD9305 since the last update before Oreo.

Pretty awful considering how much I paid for it when it came out. Only had to wait over a year for Dolby Vision - and even then the built in Netflix is useless for anything above 4k (HDR/DV).

Hoping it addresses the painful issues of slow userface, freezing and constant wifi troubles (no other device I own has this connection difficulty).

I formatted it the way you said and voilaaa..

Why don't they put this information in their user guide??!!

You the man Daviy7. Much love.

[carlos19664]

Thanks for the info now I have to find a smaller USB drive to be able to use my expensive supposed to be Smart TV. Really not impressed, one of the whole reasons why I purchased this TV was the fact it was android which is supposed to make things like this easier to use. I too had a 1 tb HD which I couldn't use especially when other TVs dont have the same problem, Sony you really need to up your game for such a supposedly big named brand,  I will be buying Samsung next time 

[jdesomer7]

When I play a VLC copied video (mp4 format) from my 2gb Seagate portable hard drive, the sound is patchy and in another language on my Sony Android TV, even though the same file plays with good sound and in English on my laptop via VLC. I pre-formatted the HD to EXfat file system.

[dutchice]

Hi jdesomer7,

Try searching and installing the Kodi app from the Google play store app on your TV. You will have the best performance and also ability to swap audio tracks.

Make a search on the best settings for the Kodi app on the Community. You also can search on YouTube how to play video files from external storage on Android TV using Kodi.

Cheers,
Dutchice

[RGBodies]

Thanks for the above info I have pulling my hair out trying to get my new tv to record with copying what you did at last I can now. How frustrating this tv has been, now all I have to do is getting my 7 day catch up to work before I go bald.

[flametree]

Hi,

I had the same problem and spent an hr trying to trouble shoot.  In the end it was a simple hardware connection problem.  I tried another USB connector cable and it worked.  I also had this problem once before where it was the actual USB input on the TV.  So plugged into the other input and it worked.  Sometimes it's the simple things.

Hope that helps.

Regards,

K

[miladrakhsha]

I have had the same problem with my Bravia X750h TV that I purchased recently. I tried to format my USB with ExFAT, FAT32 and NTFS and non of them work. I tried to format the USB with the formatting utility of the TV itself and still, it does not work. I tried to connect 3 different external hard drive and non of them work. Given how easy it was for me to connect any of my external hard drive to my old samsung TV, I am surprised that this is such difficult task with Sony TVs.

Can someone please help me with this issue? Is it ever going to work or should I just return the TV while I can?

[gratimhow]

I've never managed to get this to work with either a stick or a drive so I gave up and bought a separate hard drive recorder. If the function is important to you I'd swap to another manufacturer while you can.