mp4 video freezes when played from usb thumb drive

[ghenghis]

I'm trying to play an mp4 video I recorded from HBO Go with the PlayOn TV application, from a USB thumb drive connected to the USB port on my coach's Panasonic SA-BTT190 Home Theater device. The video starts, plays for about 4 seconds, then freezes, and won't resume. I can search forward through the video, but anywhere I stop the search and try to resume playing, it plays for about 4 seconds and then freezes.

The video plays fine on multiple computers, and also when plugged into the USB port on multiple smart TVs.

I've tried different thumb drives to play the video on the HT device, no avail.

I've also tried playing the video from a USB hard drive, again, no joy.

I thought there might be a problem related to possible watermarking of the video file, but I don't think so, for two reasons. First, if I was being prevented from playing the video because the HT device was detecting a security watermark, the HT device manual states that a message to that effect would appear on the TV screen, and on the HT device itself. No such message appears. Second, I took the mp4 file and burned it onto a DVD using the open source DVD Flick application. The resulting DVD played just fine from the HT device. What I've read about security watermarking tells me that burning a watermarked mp4 onto DVD preserves the watermark, so the HT device should not have played the DVD if this were my problem.

The Home Theater device is running the latest firmware.

:banghead

Is there some way to get the HT device to play mp4 video from a USB thumb drive?

If I have to swap out the HT device, how hard would that be? And what would you recommend as a replacement.

Thanks in advance for all help and suggestions.

[ABrask]

First...not all USB ports have the same the same data transfer rates. Your device might have an older standard. Second...all solid state memory is not the same. Inexpensive thumb drives often have inexpensive (read that "slow") data transfer rates. Finally....the size and compression scheme (CODEC) for the video file is what drives the bit transfer rate that will be required to play the video without hiccups or buffering. A 720p file might play fine from a particular USB drive, while a 1080p file may not. Bottom line is: this might not be fixable with your existing hardware.

[FaithBowls]

Panasonic is junk. That's your problem. Get an hdmi adaptor for your phone / tablet and plug directly into your tv. Or just plug your computer to tv with hdmi.