Anyone tried the USB Video Feature Yet?

Yes, it works for me. Was able to play a .WMV and .MP4 files. Haven't tried other formats just yet.

 

That's pretty cool! I am going to try some videos soon.

 

Tim, how did you get to the videos to play? I tried 2 USB sticks, USB2 (32GB) and (USB3 64GB) with various types of videos but nothing happens when I insert the USB drives into the USB slot. Was your drive formatted with FAT32? And did the system automatically recognize the drive? what's the procedure for you?

Thanks in advance

 

Mine Prius Prime played .m4v but not .mov movies on a FAT32 formatted USB drive. Thanks for "parking break" tip, Tideland! That is why I couldn’t play them previously. Without the parking brake on, only the audio plays. I selected audio source “USB" and it started playing automatically. I could scroll through the movies using buttons on the steering wheel. You can also view the list of them using the audio Navigation screen, using the Browse button.

 

Oddly enough when I left my parking space the video continued. I would have thought it would only play when the car is in Park. ... but it plays when driving - at parking lot speeds anyway.

 

Scroll right on the file type picker in the USB window. Video is on the second screen.

 

Just tested this myself - I was only able to play audio until realizing the parking brake had to be on "transmission in park not enough". Once I stepped on the parking brake it played. I then shifted into drive, the video remained. I disengaged the parking brake, video went to audio only. I stepped on the parking brake again, video reappeared. I tried gently moving with parking brake partially engaged and was able to physically move and have the video play. I would not condone doing this for a number of reasons but it is physically possible.

 

To help some of us make scene out of this thread please identify which screen size you are using, reason is that the software is different depending on which system you have.

I am using a 11.6' screen in an 2017 advanced package (no optical disk slot) Prius Prime US car. Software may have differences between the US and Canada. The frame size and rate for an .mp4 file that I have used for testing on an USB2 8g Fat32 formatted thumb drive was 1920 x 1080 worked fine the file was generated with a GoPro 5 camera. I have seen size limits posted 720 x 480 (NTSC) which 1920 x 1080 definitely exceeds. I have yet to find documentation in either online or paper manual for this functionality. If somebody knows where it is please post manual number, section & page. I have also been testing with a second file which was originally a commercial DVD from the Devil's Tower, Gift store it is a 720 x 540 which is also playing just fine.

 

Additional information USB3 thumb drive 8gig will work with the same test file 1920x1080 frame size with a frame rate of 29 frames/second, a data rate of 29956kbps, Audio stereo 127kbps, 48Khz - USB3 128 gig does not get recognized as USB and you do not get a message that it is being read which you do with the 8 gig.

 

No joy on Prime Plus. FAT32, I tried MKV and MP4. USB is seen, and reports no media found.

 

In Response to Prime8 i believe the Plus model has the 7" screen, and not the 11.6, my guess is the software is different I know the manuals are and that functionality may not be supported in that configuration.

 

Update / correction on USB3.0 thumb drive my test drive was NTFS and not FAT32 which has the following limitations. Will reformat and test again. "Limitations under Windows 8/7/Vista/XP: A FAT32 partition cannot be created that is larger than 32GB. A file cannot be transferred to a FAT32 partition if the file is larger than 4GB. FAT32 file system performs more slowly than NTFS (Windows)" has any one used a multiple partioned FAT32 drive and gotten music or video from the hire patitions? I wish there was a post that had the software limitation. Can exFat32 be used? "exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) is a Microsoft file system optimized for flash memory such as USB flash drives and SD cards. ... exFAT can be used where the NTFS file system is not a feasible solution (due to data structure overhead), yet the file size limit of the standard FAT32 file system is unacceptable." Since the thumb drive is the storage location all the head unit has to hold is an access table.

 

It works like a charm. Any way to remove the parking break stipulation ... for my passenger of course.