[SmartSaves]

I have rear seat entertainment system. I am using one terabyte USB C SSD for videos, it is connected to the USB C port inside the centre armrest. SSD shows up in media menu > select it > scroll down to folders you created.

My setup is for children, videos are hand picked, and saved in separate video folders. So far played all sorts of videos and audio formats, but no pictures.

Video plays well, but there is no on screen soft buttons (Play, Pause, Next etc.) when video is played from the SSD hard drive, you basically select file to play, and play something else (FM, music, ...) or press the power/volume button at the front to stop. Small inconvenience, but works for the kids.

I am also aware of the iDrive 7.0 indexing limitations, I only save music and videos that I am very sure about (no deleting/renaming/changing after saving a file). iDrive can be forced to reindex the hard drive (takes multiple flash drives to be connected one after another).

I don't use this setup to play video at the front screen, but it does play at whatever aspect ratio the video came with (not full screen). I am also PLEX user at home, but didn't want to jailbreak my iPhone to side-install other apps to work within CarPlay.

Hope it helps some what!