Media playback via external hard drive on LG C9 TV not working

10 posts · originally from https://geek.digit.in/community/threads/media-playback-via-external-hard-drive-on-lg-c9-tv-not-working.207295/

I read somewhere that it is possible to connect an external HDD to the LG C9 and run videos / movies from it. I went to a store yesterday and tried it out.
However, after connecting my hard drive, opening the default video player would just cause the whole screen to go black. This was not the case when I tried out its music player - that worked fine (I was able to see all the folders on my HDD). I am not sure what the issue is. I tried 2 HDDs - a 2 TB exFAT and a 1 TB NTFS. I got black screens for both of them when I tried to open the video player.

Can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong? Is there any other video player that should be installed for the LG C9 TV?

What type of video file were you trying to pay? Have you checked with some standard test clips?

I wasn't able to view any of the directories (in my HDD) at all - let alone being able to select any video file. Opening the "Photo and Video player" caused the entire screen to go dark.

Try with a pen drive(both fat & ntfs formatted) after copying some clips from your HDDs.

FAT32 won't work for me. The movies that I have are 4K. I don't have a big pen drive either.
Does the LG C9 not support video playback from HDDs?

gdebojyoti said:
Does the LG C9 not support video playback from HDDs?

If the USB port is giving enough power for your HDD, then it should be possible given that video player has support for your video's codec.
If yours is a smart TV, install MX Player or VLC and try again.

If power was the issue then it should have affected music playback on same hdd too,I think it may be because of some "incompatible videos" in hdd whose thumbnail generation is crashing TV's explorer/player window.

Download some 4k sample clips from here & try it with a pendrive.
4KSamples - Free Downloadable 4K Sample Content

Okay. I'll give that a try the next time I go to the store.
Thank you.

LG C9 is a smart TV, but it runs WebOS. I don't think VLC and MX players exist for that platform.

Seems like the firmware needed to be updated. I couldn't hear any sound though. Hopefully I'll be able to find a fix for that too.
Btw, I tried with a pen drive too. It worked (video as well as audio).

It could be simply a lack of support for the codecs.