Sony's Bravia range has long been considered among the best TVs you can buy, and with good reason. The flagship TVs are feature-filled and boast of some of the best picture performance we've seen. You can plug the USB drive into the USB port on Sony Bravia TV and then enjoy video files stored in the drive on big screen. However, it has video format and codec limitation. For smoothly video playback on Sony Bravia TV via USB Drive, the video files stored on USB drive should be compatible with Sony Bravia TV. From Sony Bravia TV forum, we find that many users complained that they failed to play MP4 files on Sony Bravia TV via USB Drive although MP4 is supported by Sony Bravia TV. So, this tutorial will guide you to how to make all MP4 files playable on Sony Bravia TV via USB drive.
Sony Bravia TV USB compatible file formats
From Sony's official page, we get the information that files from a USB device need to be compatible with the following file formats:
Still images: JPEG format or RAW format (preview only)
Music: MP3 format
Video: AVCHD, MP4 (H.264/AVC) or MPEG1 format (not playable in some cases)
Solution to play MP4 files on Sony Bravia TV via USB
From above information, we can see that Sony Bravia TV supports MP4 format, but it should be encoded with H.264/AVC codec. If your MP4 files stored on USB drive are not encoded with H.264/AVC codec, your Sony Bravia TV may fail to read them. Is there any way to play these unsupported MP4 files on Sony Bravia TV via USB Drive? Don't worry, here is a workable and simple-to-use tool called Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate (Review) which helps you to convert any unsupported MP4 files to Sony Bravia TV USB supported H.264/AVC format. Besides MP4, the software also enables conversion between other different video and audio file formats, it can convert MKV, AVI, MOV, FLV, MPG, etc to Sony Bravia TV supported file format with the best quality.
To get better playback effect on Sony Bravia TV, you can adjust the output profile parameters such as video codec, bit rate, frame rate, resolution, audio codec, bit rate, sample rate, channels using this tool. What's more, you can also adjust the output aspect ratio to be adapt with your Bravia TV's display screen aspect ratio. If you are not familiar with Sony Bravia TV profile settings, the software also enables you to directly output video/movie to Sony or other famous TV brand such as Samsung/LG/Panasonic TV specially optimized profile format.
Compress MP4 file for Sony Bravia TV USB
Because of the limited storage space of USB drive, you may need to reduce the MP4 file size to save more files on your USB drive. This software allows users to compress MP4 files in the following ways:
Split the large video into small parts by file size, count for length
Trim or cut video to remove unwanted parts or segments
Lower output video resolution
Lower the bit rate 20-50% of the default to get small files
Lowering the frame rate of your video to 15 or 10 fps can reduce the file size by as much as 1/2 or 2/3
For Mac users, please download the Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac (Review) to perform the conversion on macOS Sierra, Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, 10.9 Mavericks, 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.7 Lion, 10.6 Snow Leopard, etc.
Step by step to Convert and Play MP4 on Sony Bravia TV via USB
Step 1: Add MP4 files to the program
Download and install this MP4 to Sony Bravia TV converter program on your computer, launch it. Click "File" menu and select "Add Video/Audio" or "Add from folder" option to import MP4 files to the application.
Tip: This software is also able to help you rip any Blu-ray and DVD to Sony Bravia TV playable video formats. It is a powerful toolkit of video converter, Blu-ray ripper and DVD ripper.
Step 2: Choose Sony Bravia TV USB playback format
Click "Format", from its drop-down option, choose one of Sony Bravia TV USB drive playable format such as "H.264 HD Video(*.mp4)" under "HD Video" main category.
You are also allowed to directly output Sony Bravia TV specially optimized file format from "TVs" > "Sony TV(*.mp4)".
Trim video to shorten video length
Open "Video Editor" window and switch to the "Trim" tab, you can drag the slider bars to include the segment you want to remain, click the left square bracket to set start point, and click the right square bracket to set end point when previewing the MP4 video or directly input specific values to "Start" and "End" box.
Split large MP4 file
By clicking the "Split" button on file list, or from "Edit" menu, you can launch the "Video Split" window. Checking "Enable" to enable it, and then you can split the large MP4 file by file count, time length, or file size.
Lower resolution/bit rate/frame rate
Click "Settings" behind format bar to open "Profile Settings" window, you can change video resolution to a suitable file size, lower the bit rate 20-50% of the default to get small files or lower the frame rate to 15 or 10 fps.
More tips for watching videos on Sony Braiva TV via USB:Supported maximum resolution: 1920*1080
Supported Minimum resolution: QCIF(176*144)
Supported maximum frame rate: 1920*1080@60fps
Go back to the main interface, hit right-bottom "Convert" button to start MP4 to Sony Bravia TV USB compatible format conversion process. When the conversion is done, transfer the generated files to your USB drive, then plug the USB drive into your Sony Bravia TV's USB port for playing MP4 files on Sony Bravia TV via USB Drive with ease.
