Playing MP4 Files on Samsung Smart TV

My First Attempt at Creating a Homemade Media Web App that Works on a Samsung Smart TV

I’ve been thinking about building a media web app for a while now and today was the first day I tested it on a Samsung Smart TV to see if it would work.

There are lots of ways you can do this but I’m trying to take the path of least resistance. For background, the MP4 file format now plays without plugins in most modern web browsers.

For my early “Alpha” tests, I just made a local web server with folders that could be browsed and put some media in there. This works for Chrome, Firefox etc. You can click and watch the video no problem.

Does the Samsung Smart TV Play MP4 Files?

The answer is a bit frustrating as it is Yes and No. WTF!

First, let’s deal with the No. The Samsung native web browser will not play a MP4 file if you link directly to it in my testing.

Next is the Yes. This happens when you add a USB Mass Storage Device to the TV. My Samsung Smart TV had 3 USB ports. I used one for a wireless Mouse / Keyboard combo device and one for a simple 10GB USB stick I had laying around for testing.

Once I added the USB Mass Storage Device to the Samsung TV USB port the Smart TV web browser would let me download the MP4 files to the USB stick then I would watch them by choosing the Mass Storage Device as the media data source.

I’m come back to add some screenshots soon.

If you found this, I hope it helped you solve your issue. 😉

~Cyber Abyss

Author: Rick Cable / AKA Cyber Abyss

A 16 year US Navy Veteran with 25+ years experience in various IT Roles in the US Navy, Startups and Healthcare. Founder of FinditClassifieds.com in 1997 to present and co-founder of Sports Card Collector Software startup, LK2 Software 1999-2002. For last 7 years working as a full-stack developer supporting multiple agile teams and products in a large healthcare organization. Part-time Cyber Researcher, Aspiring Hacker, Lock Picker and OSINT enthusiast.