# DVD player that supports USB hardrive to play AVI's



## elefantfresh (13 Nov 2007)

Just looking at a DVD player that supports USB jump drives. After doing a little research, this one  seems to do the job. BUT, will it support a 500gb external hardrive if i plug that in to watch movies from it? Does anybody know if it will support a 500gb external harddrive from which i will be able to play AVI files?


----------



## ClubMan (13 Nov 2007)

One thing to bear in mind is that many players that support _USB _drives only support _FAT32 _and not _NTFS _formatted drives. This means that a large drive may need to be split into multuple (32GB?) _FAT32 _partitions.


----------



## efm (13 Nov 2007)

Take a look at [broken link removed] from a forum on Amazon - it looks like it will but make sure the drive is FAT and not NTFS formatted.

Further Amazon comments here - there are also instructiosn to make the player multi region on there as well

Edit - Ah Clubman got there before me!


----------



## elefantfresh (14 Nov 2007)

Went to PowerCity last night and brought along my harddrive. Asked the guy to plug it in and let me see it working which he did. Sorted!


----------



## efm (14 Nov 2007)

Glad it worked - I never would have thought of doing that!

As a matter of interest how did the files on your HD display on the dvd player? ie how did you browse and did it display folders and subfolders?


----------



## ClubMan (14 Nov 2007)

elefantfresh said:


> Went to PowerCity last night and brought along my harddrive. Asked the guy to plug it in and let me see it working which he did. Sorted!


Can the player see the full capacity of your drive? You may need to partition it into multiple 32GB _FAT _partitions.


----------



## elefantfresh (14 Nov 2007)

I Have 120gbs of music in one folder - it can see and play these. I have 70-80 movies (avi) and it can see and play these. I didnt partition the drive - just left it as is (500gbs). When you plug it into the dvd player it comes up on the screen like a very simple IE browser, folders etc. Easy to use and i had it working in 2mins when i got it home. The only thing that immediatly jumps out at you is the file names - it only seems to support the first 8 letters. So for example, I have 6 star wars movies and i cannot tell which is which without starting them up.


----------



## efm (14 Nov 2007)

Ah - so the hard drive contents are displayed on the TV? That sounds pretty cool. I always wondered how those units interfaced to any usb attached devices.

What is the video quality like when playing the .avi's from the hard drive - I know it depends on the quality and transfer rate of the .avi but just wondering.

BTW 120gb of music? What format is that ripped in FLAC or WAV or something else? - if it's mp3 you must have about 1,000 albums!!


----------



## elefantfresh (14 Nov 2007)

Yeah, the quality is bang on - its exactly how it appears on the pc - to my untrained eye of course. I suppose if i plugged into a HD 46" i'd see how bad it is! But its fine on my telly. 
Music is pretty much all mp3. Been "collecting" music for quite sometime now. To be honest, its a disgusting amount of music. I'll never make my way through it all. Nearly always tend to listen to the same old stuff. Only now and again do I venture outside my comfort zone! Although i have been listening to Little Richard quite a bit recently. Lord knows why.


----------



## ClubMan (14 Nov 2007)

Interesting. What filesystem is the drive formatted with - e.g. _FAT32 _(presumably not if the 32GB partition limit applies), _NTFS _(maybe some players are able to handle this nowadays?), something else? Since the filenames are limited is there any support for _ID3 _(or similar) tagging of the files with metadata so that the player can display additional info?


----------



## redo (14 Nov 2007)

Check the philips D5980 out at pixmania. It is the model up from the one you are looking at.  Up scaling to 1080p


----------

