On 25/02/2025 21:34, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
I don’t even have to format it with the TV. It will only add all the Android-typical directories when I stick in a drive for the first time. The only case when I would need to format a drive: if I want to use it to record TV onto it. Because then the recording is DRM-entangled to only be watchable on that TV.
My new TV (that refuses to RECORD to anything other than a hard drive) will happily READ usb sticks. But it doesn't insist on formatting a drive to record - indeed I think it formats them NTFS, and will happily accept exFAT.
But there's a AES-128 key or something in the TV firmware. so all recordings are encrypted using the TV's own key. That's an LG TV that uses Web OS.
Likewise, our older Philips TV. That's probably about 10 years old, the USB stick is formatted ?FAT32?, and it will quite happily record to it, but the recordings are not visible to a (windows) computer. I haven't dug any deeper yet. I guess that's Philip's own OS.
And our JVC TV - again about 10 years and their own OS - just records unencrypted to FAT or exFAT USB stick.
So the LG is the only one that won't record to a stick. But WebOS seems to be the in thing nowadays - JVC has gone over to it too, along with others. I hope recording to hard drive isn't becoming universal.
If you can root your tv, though, you can get at the AES key, and there's a utility that will decode the recordings. It's linux-based ...
What I want though, if anybody knows, is an app that will share the USB drive on the network so I can copy my own stuff to it without faffing about taking it off, putting it on a laptop, transferring and putting it back. But Google seems to think "sharing" and "casting" mean the same thing, assumes everything is Android, and can't tell the difference between "sending" and "receiving".
In other words, if you're not a lemming Google doesn't have a clue what you're talking about ...
Cheers, Wol
