Chromecast with Google TV USB

by tedself

UPDATE:

TL:DR MiXplorer can read exFAT drives via its OTG driver but videos suffer from extreme stuttering. I was not able to access drives formatted as ext3 or ext4 via the same MiXplorer OTG drivers.

I formatted to ext3 and while MiXplorer would ask permission to mount the drive it would return an error after permission was granted. Note that drives formatted by the CCwGTV under System>Storage are formatted to FAT32 no matter what format you begin with. For example, I re-formatted the ext3 drive in the CCwGTV and the CCwGTV changed it to FAT32.

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ORIGINAL POST: Hi. I'm new to Android TV and would appreciate any help you can provide. I've read through posts mentioning external storage attached via USB for media playback but can't seem to get the CCwGTV to recognize drives formatted to anything other than FAT32.

Steps I've taken:

  1. Format drive from exFAT to FAT32
  2. Attach drive to CCwGTV and format to Internal Storage
  3. Format to Removable Media (CCwGTV seems to require that the drive first be formatted as Internal Storage)
  4. CCwGTV formats drive to FAT32

Also tried this:

  1. Format drive to EXT4 using EaseUS in Windows 10
  2. CCwGTV shows the drive under System>Storage but the drive is not available for playback unless I format it (which then formats it to FAT32)

Has anyone been able to attach a drive formatted to EXT4 and play local media with file sizes greater than 4GB? I have enabled Developer Mode and switched to MTP and I've tried accessing EXT4 formatted drives via USB OTG in X-Plore File Manager, MiXplorer, and directly in VLC and Kodi with no luck.

Thanks either way.

afeitarse

I don't believe that CCGTV supports external drives with anything but FAT32. It wasn't really designed for that use, which is unfortunate since it has such little space on its own.

tedself

UPDATE: I followed the instructions provided by neok182 and was able to read a 128GB USB drive formatted as exFAT in MiXplorer. I was able to launch a ~15GB h.264 video file in Kodi but I experienced the same stuttering that neok182 did. I even experienced a slight stutter playing a ~1.5 GB video file. Will try formatting as ext4 to see if that helps with the stuttering.

SubaruAmbassador

Overthinking this much, aren't we? Just do it wirelessly mate. I use X-Plore and it works great on my trips / overnights. I turn my phone into a hotspot and then enable Wi-Fi sharing on both phone and Chomecast/GTV. You'll be able to acess all the files from your phone into your TV, just use the remote to access all the files from your phone and voila, you can watch all your videos without any problems using X-Plore's built in video player or install MX Player Pro, I'm a big fan of the latter. Cheers!

Physicallykrisp

Was watching this video and the guy mentioned he tried a few USB adapters and a lot of them didn't work maybe its the usb adaptor your using? anyway the link to the video is below hope it helps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8CcVqUW72g

neok182

https://labs.xda-developers.com/store/app/com.mixplorer

MiXplorer has a built in exfat/NTFS driver so you can read external storage in those file formats through it.

Unfortunately in my tests trying to play any files larger than 4GB eventually results in lag/stuttering or the video just stopping entirely. There does not seem to be enough memory or data bandwidth through the USB port to handle large video files. Two different USBC hubs had the same results. One didn't even work at all lol. Kept the second one though as the ethernet worked so at least have that.

You can use USB as extra internal storage as well through the chromecast and it reformats it to ext3 which is a linux file format and can have 4GB+ files but it can't be read by windows without extra help. Not sure if this would fix any of the issues though as I didn't attempt it.

leonidude

So I downloaded mixplorer thinking it would read my ccwgt formatted drive, but it doesn’t. Am I doing something wrong? I am desperate to find an app that recognises the removable drive so that I can transfer files to it over wifi or ftp (Mac won’t recognise the drive to do this).