Hard drives for television??

Dumb question. Do they have hard drives for recording television programs or perhaps holding mp4 or audio files to play on TV? Basically just a drive, processor, and remote?
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
The only way to record tv programs is to use a dvr of some sort, Tivo or similar. You just can't hook something up to the tv to record. You can hook up a usb to say show pictures or other media depending on the tv.
 

gillmanjr

Member
Are you talking old school cable TV or streaming TV? If its the former, I believe johnb is correct. But with a streaming TV service you may be able to record it from a PC. I'm not 100% sure about that but I think I remember a long time ago doing something similar but with a digital movie, I think I was able to record it to disk...somehow.

Edit: now that I think about it, they make PCIe cable tuners. It might be possible with a PC. But not with only a television.
 
I just want to basically preload mp4 video onto a drive to play on TV. I can copy from DVD and watch many movies back to back. Also any slideshows or videos I record outside. My emphasis is less on recording from TV since DVR does that fine.
 

gillmanjr

Member
I just want to basically preload mp4 video onto a drive to play on TV. I can copy from DVD and watch many movies back to back. Also any slideshows or videos I record outside. My emphasis is less on recording from TV since DVR does that fine.
Oh you should be able to do that with a thumb drive and a modern smart TV. I know you can look at photos, slideshows, and play music from a thumb drive because I've done it. I've never played MP4 video files though, so someone needs to confirm...
 
Oh you should be able to do that with a thumb drive and a modern smart TV. I know you can look at photos, slideshows, and play music from a thumb drive because I've done it. I've never played MP4 video files though, so someone needs to confirm...
Yeah mp4 videos can be quite large. I don't think I can run a 3gb file from thumb drive.
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
Even USB 2.0 tops out at a rate of 35 MB/sec or so, translated to bits is 280 mbit/sec.

Raw data from a UHD BluRay? ~144 mbit/sec.

You probably aren't storing raw UHD rips.
 
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