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  1. I have an HP Mini without HDMI port. It does have vga and usb. I did a pretty good Google search and all answers to the question about connecting USB to USB seemed equivocal. I can plug a usb thumb drive into this set and access movies on the drive easily. That begs the question as to why the HDTV cannot access the same files on my PC via USB connected.

    One answer in another forum claimed that "USB ports on HDTVs are output only. They cannot receive data!" Which is clearly wrong since I can play movies stored on a thumb drive inserted in my Samsung plasma HDTV.

    Another claim was that the USB port on the HDTV cannot process audio. Wrong again. As I said, I can play movies stored on a thumb drive inserted in the USB port on the HDTV complete with audio.

    So what's the catch? Why can't I connect my HP mini to the television via male usb to male usb? Another claim was that two 5vdc outputs would fry one another. So why does MONOPRICE have a full selection of male to male usb cables in stock?

    I can connect via VGA. It won't be much trouble. I"m just curious about all of this. And a google search on the topic turns up so much ambiguity and clear guesswork.
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  2. Member Ethlred's Avatar
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    Why can't I connect my HP mini to the television via male usb to male usb?
    Because that is done with a Ethernet connection. With the USB connector the TV is reading the date directly from the flash drive as it was designed to do. IF your TV has a way to network THEN you may be able to do what you want. Otherwise just copy the files to a USB drive and the TV will read it.
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  3. The short answer is "it won't work".

    The longer answer is that a USB device is meant to transfer data with no addressing or security protocols, a PC implements these things for networking and most TV's do not. It IS possible to network using USB, but the TV does not usually have the necessary circuitry.

    You want to transfer audio and video with no security,addressing, or networking methods. The VGA cable and audio cable are the way to do that. HDMI or DVI would be other options. Not USB.
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  4. USB works with one device being the "host" or "controller" to which a USB "device" connects. Mouse to PC, hard drive to PC, thumb drive to TV etc. You generally can't directly connect two "host" USB devices. At best, they wouldn't know how to talk to each other.

    USB cables are male to male. They're called "A male" to "B male" cables. The USB connector on your PC/TV is female. There's various sizes and shapes of each connector, but the typical A male to B male cable would be of the type which connects a printer to a PC, or a hard drive to a PC. The USB cable is male both ends. One end designed to connect to a "host" and the other to a "device". I'd imagine the whole point of USB cables being some flavour of "A male" on one end and "B male" on the other, is to make sure what you're wanting to do can't be done.

    You can buy male to female USB cables but I don't think they're actually part of the official USB spec for cables. A male to female USB cable could be used to extend a normal A male to B male cable, or as an extension for devices which don't have cables such as thumb drives etc. A standard size male to female cable would have the type of male connector you'd plug into a PC/TV on one end, and the female version of that on the other..... you could plug a USB flash drive into the female end and the male end into a PC.
    Last edited by hello_hello; 23rd Jan 2014 at 07:47.
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  5. Hello_hello has the answer. It's the USB "host" and "controller" issue.
    An alternate method for PC to TV connection is having WIFI and DLNA support in your TV or Bluray player and making the connection over WIFI.
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