Question on flash drives in general.
 

I need a USB flash drive, but there are some things I am not sure of at all, whats new, LOL!

1. Can I download movies to my computer, put on a flash drive and play them back on the computer? Can I play them back on my TV?

2. Is a 64 GB drive large enough capacity wise to store a movie, I've heard that takes a lot of space but how much I don't know?
Can I use it on a Windows system as well as Linux (my sons college uses Windows).

3. I have researched some what and came up with a couple drives.
Samsung USB 3 64GB had great reviews till you looked at the buy window on Amazon and there was a note from the seller in Oriental somewhere saying we will deliver when we can, not kidding! So I forgot that one!

I read a good review (reviewer said so) of another one from Kingston and another good review from a company called Scan Disk, these were all 64GB drives.

Became confused on the BS so I came here to LQ for some clarification.

No where does any one say "Linux compataible", this is a must for me!

Just what should one look for in a quality "Flash Drive"

Any and all information is very much appreciated

Rather depends where you're going to download the movies from, and what sort of TV you have.

http://lifehacker.com/can-i-get-drm-...ting-477555875

Assuming you have a DRM free movie file, you can watch it on a smart TV from a flash drive.

The file will be anywhere from under 1GB to 4GB for DVD quality, so you can fit a fair few on a 64GB drive.

Make sure to unmount the flash drive correctly before removing. Made that mistake with a smart TV this summer and ruined a flash drive- fortunately only a cheap generic 2GB one- because I pulled it out without unmounting it properly. There was a safe remove option in one of the TV menus I found later.

Compatibility with Linux or Windows is not really a problem, as long as it's a standard format flash drive.

As for quality, look for a reputable brand and supplier.

FreewheelinFrank, thank you, sounds like some sound advise.

Just a note. Some large flash drives might be formatted in exfat. Might be rare.

I'd wonder about that seller on amazon.

I'd get a real usb hard drive for $50 before I spent that much on a usb flash that size. Is there a reason you need compact drive that large?

Yep. We do that here. I use gnome-mplayer for that and open file.

Yep. My wife is a die hard Windows user. We play pendrives on the TV with her vista desktop also using KMPlayer.

By the way. I use Class 10 SD cards that are 16gig for this kind of stuff. I make sure my distro file manager auto mounts and gives me permissions to access the file. Depending on what Desktop Environment, Distro, and File Manager you are using. This should be a auto thingy for you the minute you plug anything usb or sd in there. I don't plug in my drives to the TV. I hook up like one of these from the netbook,laptop,Desktop computer to the TV (if TV has VGA input, most do)
I run external speakers like this for sound not counting on the TV speakers.
They actually sound better than the inbuilt TV sound system anyways. If you want surround sound. I use a headphone to rca jack splitter and input it into a 200 watt per channel amplifier and then control speakers hooked up to the amp that way. You have to turn alsa Mixer down way down low when you do that though.

You don't need a 64GB USB drive, but if you have the money, go for it. The largest I've ever bought is 32GB, and I have never filled one up, even using it to run a full Debian install. I have my entire music library on a microSD card, in my phone, along with everything else, and it's not half full.

The only caveat I know of with flash drives is to buy a reputable brand. Some el cheapo drives from China have been found to be fakes, low-capacity drives relabeled with much larger numbers. Either SanDisk or Kingston would be fine, and if the drive doesn't work they will replace it.

Whether you can plug the drive into your TV and watch movies on it depends on your TV. I wouldn't even try to guess at that. But you should be able to plug it into any computer and watch.

Look for items where Amazon does the fulfillment, or you're buying from Amazon themselves.

I've an "Integral" USB 3 16Gb drive on my keyring and an earlier version of this: http://www.victorinox.com/ch/product...GB/4.6125.TG32 and they work fine.

Just consider whether or not you need USB 3, if your computers don't have USB 3 sockets (these are new, and can be identified as they have blue plastic inserts) then consider standard USB keys of the same size if they are cheaper.

Depends on your music collection, my CD collection and bought downloads currently run to around 48Gb so 64Gb is a must ;) ;)

Yes. But as far as TVs, DVD players, bluray players etc. go you can have format issues.

Most of those devices can only play set filetypes, e.g. .avi files encoded with XviD/DiVX.

Its not that big an issue if you create your own files, as the formats that play on TVs/DVDplayers etc. you can normally create yourself.

However some formats, like XviD, are inferiour to other formats, e.g. x264 (video only, can be used with various audio encoding methods). So you may need/want to create bigger files.

Where it can be a real issue is with material you dont encode yourself- if your TV only plays XviD .avis, and you have some .mp4 file, you'll need to transcode it to a .avi. Transcoding any 'lossy' file (most video files are lossy) will result in quality loss.

64GB is way overkill. I'm currely using a Sandisc 'Cruzer' 16GB USB 2.0 flash drive to move videos from my main desktop to my media boxxen. I seem to get about a 20MB/sec reading transfer rates, I've had it for well over a year, and it was less than $10.

Honestly...I wouldnt bother spending time on reviews for flash drives.

It can be worth it IF you must have a fast USB 3.0 flash drive. Transfer rates for USB 3.0 flash drives are all over the place, some of them are not much faster than USB 2.0, some are a lot faster. You'll pay a fair amount more for a 'fast' drive, and IMO its not really worth it. Does it really matter if transfering the video to the USB flash drive takes 40 seconds or 10 seconds? Since it will take a lot longer to actually make files (if you create them yourself) or to d/l them (if you get them from the net).

That said, I tend to agree with sgosnell, get a reputable brand. Sandisk, kingston, corsair, transcend, imation, etc.. BTW, just getting a 'branded' flash drive doesnt mean its fast, or even real, there have been plenty of 'fake' flash drives (and similar stuff, like microSD) around from time to time. There was a heap of sandisk fakes around for a while, I bet they are still being sold now and again.

In the end, you've got 3 choices-

1- a random cheapo from ebay, computer store, and lots of other places (I got my Sandisc 'Cruzer' from the post office).

2- buy a 'known good' flash drive from a brand connected to a particular sote. For example, sandisc only has 3 'Certified Genuine & Authentic' dealers on ebay. Yep, you know they are sandisc for sure...but if you go to one of the 'Certified' dealers they want twice as much as other retailers.

3- a known brand from a normal retailer (online or offline) and just take a small risk that its real.

@ TenTenths and sgosnell- wow, yuo can fit your whole music collection onto a cheap flash/micro USB drive? Neat.

I'm just waiting for cheap 512GB USB flash drives so I can put my 300GB+ music collection onto one. (a couple of thousand self ripped flacs take up a lot of room!)

I've been tempted to try one of the 'yum cha' 256GB USB 2.0 flash drives that you can find for about $30-50 though.

I've rather limited musical tastes ;) ;)

Some day I'll rip the remainder of my CDs, but for now... meh! ;)

Whether you can play a movie copied to a flash drive directly on your TV depends upon your TV manufacturer. Some do, some don't. Simplest way to find out is to read the manual. Do an online search with the manufacturer name and model number and append manual. That should get you the manual to either review online or download and save for future reference. My TVs have usb ports but can't play movies directly. Also, as stated above, there are limitations on some as to which format will play.

Most newer TVs also have a VGA port. I use a notebook and attach the VGA cable to it and the TV and play movies that way.

If you have a common brand of TV, your best source of information will be the manual.

If your TV is a popular brand then you may be able to perform a few tricks with the remote control. For example, the TV at work (Samsung) isn't supposed to play movies from USB. But...... these TVs use standard firmware across the range, so a few clicks with the remote (after a Google search) and the TV now thinks it's a different model and DOES play movies. ;) ;)