[Master One]

I have a Hisense PX1-Pro projector which comes with Android TV 10 and I have just installed the latest Kodi from Play Store.

I have been using a Crucial X6 4TB Portable SSD (formated with ext4) as USB storage with that projector to play video files ever since by using the built-in media browser, but awkwardly the file manager of Kodi can not access it (shows an error message that that location can not be opened).

I have already played around with formating another Crucial X6 4TB drive with various file systems (exFAT, F2FS, NTFS) using my Linux laptop and from the settings menu of the projector, but it just doesn't work as supposed to (using the projector, formating as internal storage results in usable 4TB but then it can not be accessed anymore when I connect it to my laptop, formating as portable storage leads to only 1.8TB usable).

All I want is to be able to connect that portable SSD to my laptop to load video files onto it and then connect to the projector to use Kodi for viewing and whatever I tried it doesn't work.

How is that even possible that the built-in media browser can access the portable SSD (formated with ext4) and play video files from it without problems and Kodi (or any other app, like some file browsers I have tried from the Play Store) not?

[kinggo]

hmmmm..........my TV does not support ext4 and AFAIK, Android generally does not support it at all for external storage. Think that you need some custom kernel for that. And hisense......like so many other Chinese vendors........who knows what's going on there. But....

formating as portable storage leads to only 1.8TB usable).

if this works, as like you can put files there and see them in KODI, then why not making 2 partitions on that drive and use it like that. If you will be picking up your files manually, you will have to choose drive/partition but if you make it the library way then it really doesn't matter how many sources you have there.

[Master One]

Already thought about that and will try with 2 partitions, but of course I would prefer to find a solution that works with a single partition.

It really is odd and I guess the ext4 file system is the reason for the described problem, but why would it work with the built-in media browser and not with installed apps? I have never heard about such problem before and it just doesn't make any sense.

[Master One]

Damned, just created 2 partitions on that USB device (1.8TB each) and formated them with vFAT, but trying to copy larger video files (> 4.3GB) there resulted in the error "Error splicing file: File too large" because obviously vFAT doesn't support large files.

So back to ext4 and the question on how it's possible that the built-in media browser can access and play files but not any installed apps.

I can't believe that there is no solution that supports a single 4TB partition and large files that can be accessed by installed apps like Kodi.

P.S. Of course there still is the possibility to format that USB device as internal storage and then somehow transfer all the files from the other Crucial X6 there somehow (but how?).

[kinggo]

well, it's android TV. Use some file manager that has network capabilities. But in that case, you can just use that drive on the network anyway.

[izprtxqkft]

It really is odd and I guess the ext4 file system is the reason for the described problem, but why would it work with the built-in media browser and not with installed apps?

reason:
android apps use virtualized file systems and do not require them to be "mounted"
kodi requires it to be "mounted" to the file system because of how Kodi is written to be cross platform it cannot rely on Android based file access protocols and isn't even coded to use these

[Master One]

So any solution for this issue?

I mean, since my projector supports the ext4 filesystem, is there a way to properly mount it so that Kodi can access it?

[izprtxqkft]

So any solution for this issue?

hmmmm..........my TV does not support ext4 and AFAIK, Android generally does not support it at all for external storage. Think that you need some custom kernel for that. And hisense......like so many other Chinese vendors........who knows what's going on there. But....

only the one kinggo gave you, installing a custom kernel
or write the code into Kodi

without those, no, it simply doesn't work