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Formatted USB-A Flash Drive in Mac till Says no Data on TV ?

M

marcusalwayswins

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 23, 2021
535
97
Hi Guys,

I have a USB A Flash Drive with movie files that I want to use with my TV which has a Google TV OS running on it. When I connect it directly to the TV, it shows ‘no data.’ I tried using a USB-C hub with my M1 MacBook Air, formatted the drive to APFS, and uploaded the movie, but the TV still doesn’t recognize it. I also formatted it to exFat in the Mac, but it still doesn’t show on the TV. What else can I do?

Note- I have MacOS Sequoia Latest Software running on the M1 MacBook Air.
 
Does the documentation for the tv tell you what format the USB drive needs to be?

Also... be aware that you may need a different partition format (as luggage mentions).
Try "Master boot record" if available.

Examples:
exFat w/Master Boot Record
MS-DOS w/Master Boot Record

Personal experience:
TVs and cars can be cranky about this.
But I also have a Roku "Ultra" (which has a USBa port), and it can even read Mac-formatted USB flashdrives -- very nice!
 
So turns out most Modern TV still only read FAT32 or NTFS I had to use a Third Party NTFS Format APP to Format the USB Flash Drive to NTFS and guess what now it shows on TV.
 
marcusalwayswins said:
I wonder if even MS-DOS would show up on TV.
Click to expand...
Most things read MS-DOS (FAT16/32)
marcusalwayswins said:
So turns out most Modern TV still only read FAT32 or NTFS
Click to expand...

Sticks formatted on Apple with "MS-DOS (FAT)" are FAT32 - should work. They work on my LG WebOS TV.
FAT32 is not great for movies because of the 4GB file size limit.

My LG WebOS TV is officially FAT32 or NTFS but has read-only support for ExFAT (so it can play exFAT).

It's probably more effective to enable WIndows file aharing on the Mac and connect via network (most smart TV's "Media Player" apps will do that).
 
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theluggage said:
It's probably more effective to enable WIndows file aharing on the Mac and connect via network (most smart TV's "Media Player" apps will do that).
Click to expand...
Can you please elaborate this Set up a little bit in detail ?
 
Last edited:
The problem with NTFS is that you can't write to an NTFS drive with the Mac OS.
At least, not "natively".
I understand there is additional 3rd-party software that makes this possible, but know nothing more beyond that...
 
marcusalwayswins said:
Can you please elaborate this Set up a little bit in detail ?
Click to expand...
Can't give detailed instructions about Google TV (and there seem to be a bunch of products going by that name), but, assuming your Mac and Smart TV are both connected to your home network,

First check that the Media Player on your TV can actually access network shares, or maybe install something like VLC (a media player) from the Play store. I'm not sure how to do this on Google TV, but most Media Player apps can access network shares. Or you can probably install VLC from the Play store.

Then, on your Mac, share the folder containing your movies:

Share Mac files with Windows users

To let users connect to your Mac from a Windows computer, turn on file sharing and enable SMB sharing.
support.apple.com

...then you should be able to open the file from your media player.
 
marcusalwayswins said:
Hi Guys,

I have a USB A Flash Drive with movie files that I want to use with my TV which has a Google TV OS running on it. When I connect it directly to the TV, it shows ‘no data.’ I tried using a USB-C hub with my M1 MacBook Air, formatted the drive to APFS, and uploaded the movie, but the TV still doesn’t recognize it. I also formatted it to exFat in the Mac, but it still doesn’t show on the TV. What else can I do?

Note- I have MacOS Sequoia Latest Software running on the M1 MacBook Air.
Click to expand...
I have my USB A flash drives to attach to my Samsung Smart tv formatted...master boot record and ExFAT.
That works.
 
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Fishrrman said:
Also... be aware that you may need a different partition format (as luggage mentions).
Try "Master boot record" if available.

Examples:
exFat w/Master Boot Record
MS-DOS w/Master Boot Record
Click to expand...
I'm just going to repeat this. Make sure that you're using MBR and not GPT: even if your TV can read ExFAT, it might not be able to read ExFAT-within-GPT. I've run into this myself.
 
Once you sort the USB format, there's also another slight thing to confirm. Mac generated video files have an extension .mpv. TV's tend to only read .mp4. It's just updating the file name. No conversion required.
 
an-other said:
Once you sort the USB format, there's also another slight thing to confirm. Mac generated video files have an extension .mpv. TV's tend to only read .mp4. It's just updating the file name. No conversion required.
Click to expand...
Not my Samsung OLED TV it reads .mkv files just fine. I don't know the extension .mpv.
 
haddy said:
Not my Samsung OLED TV it reads .mkv files just fine. I don't know the extension .mpv.
Click to expand...
mkv and mpv are different container formats so the name change trick wont work there. mpv is a container that actually has a couple different synonymous file extensions and a tv might not be smart enough to understand all those nicknames.
 
My older Samsung TV only accepts USB formatted with
MS-DOS (FAT32), Master Boot Record
file type .mp4
 
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