Can I use Kodi from a jump drive?

[Tealhawke]

Can I plug a 16 gb jump drive - or a portable hard drive - into the USB port of my new Samsung tv and run kodi on the tv from the external drive? Or do I have to build an HTPC and run it from the PC to the TV through a Windows or Linux OS?

If I can run it from a drive, without an OS on the drive... how do I install it on the drive?? Thanks guys, I love this forum.

[Alucard]

No you cannot. Most TVs do not use a compatible OS. I think Sony has an Android Smart TV but have no clue if you can get Kodi on it.

You do not need to build a HTPC. You can use a Android based TV Box and most decent ones run about 100 bucks US. Most people here like the Avov or Fire TV. There are other boxes too so do some research. Example if you have a 4K TV you probably want a box that supports 4K. You should get one that is a quad core and minimum of 2 gigs of ram. If you are planing on using wifi, get one that supports dual band and make sure your wireless router supports it too. If you have a AV receiver but no support for HDMI audio, then you probably need a box that has the optical for audio and the new Fire TV does not. Just some things to keep in mind.

[Tealhawke]

No you cannot. Most TVs do not use a compatible OS. I think Sony has an Android Smart TV but have no clue if you can get Kodi on it.

You do not need to build a HTPC. You can use a Android based TV Box and most decent ones run about 100 bucks US. Most people here like the Avov or Fire TV. There are other boxes too so do some research. Example if you have a 4K TV you probably want a box that supports 4K. You should get one that is a quad core and minimum of 2 gigs of ram. If you are planing on using wifi, get one that supports dual band and make sure your wireless router supports it too. If you have a AV receiver but no support for HDMI audio, then you probably need a box that has the optical for audio and the new Fire TV does not. Just some things to keep in mind.

Thank you

[halikus]

This applies to the thread title but not the OP's requirements. I never see it posted anywhere.

If you want to run Kodi from a USB stick in a WINDOWS OS it's possible to run Kodi off a removable device. Install Kodi, copy the directory from "X:\Program Files\Kodi" to the USB, and then run "Kodi.exe -p". This will create a portable version of Kodi that populates a directory called "portable_data" with all your userdata\addons\settings. The Kodi directory can be named anything and run from any location. This is handy for re-install situations too. I assume the only caveat is that the MS runtimes are installed on the host PC. In a few occurrences it may also be necessary to edit some addon settings (addon_data) from an absolute path (ie: c:\users\name\appdata\local\kodi\etc) to something like "special://profile/addon_data/plugin.pluginname".