Raylo

I think the functionality of the ports depends on what the manufacturer wants them to do. On my Samsung LCD they call them wiselink usb ports and yes, you can load media (picture, music, video) onto a USB thumb drive and then go to the TV menu and select the USB port as the source (as opposed to cable, antenna, etc). to play whatever is on the USB drive. The formats supported again depends on the mfg. Mine seems to play all the typical major formats. On my TV when you select the USB souce (or the similar wiselink network source that can share media from other computers on the network) you get a menu to select "pictures", "music", and "video". Selecting any of these brings up a file list with icons for media type (video list includes actual thumbnails) from which to select what to play.