DVD Player with external HDD support...

[kikatu]

Hi, last year when searching for a DVD Player for a relative, I came across one which had the support for an external HDD,

Does a similar type player exist letting you test re-authored DVDs stored in the external HDD?

Also does the PS3 have poor playback issues for quality recordable media, as some older PS2 did with Dual Layers after the layer break (don’t know if it was fixed)?

[Spaceman-Spiff]

Something like this has a USB feature: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=24333

You can just plug in your external HDD through USB cable.

For that particular Philips product I linked, the cons are:
- Can only read FAT format, not NTFS. Workaround: you can use a 3rd party tool (http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm) to do large fat32 format
- High-res/high bandwidth XviD video files might not be read properly (choppy), not sure about MPEG-2. Basically, the USB doesn't read as fast as the DVD.

Overall, despite the shortcomings, I think it's still a great buy at that price.

[kikatu]

If MPEG-2 is possible, it looks interesting enough to test menus with a small movie sample.

Thank you Spaceman; watch out for the coming meteor shower!

[Leviathan73]

Xoro 8410 ))

[ilovejedd]

Warning, the port on the Philips DVP5982 is USB 1.1. I've only used it with DivX files and it glitches at around 3~4mbps when using USB. The same file works perfectly fine when reading from disc. Another irritating thing I've noticed is it does not support nested folders on USB. File naming for USB is MS-DOS 8.3.

Still, it's pretty cool. I have a Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB attached to it and being able to choose from the wide selection of movies on the hard drive beats having to get up and change discs every time.

[kikatu]

Thank you ilovejedd for the warning, Leviathan73 about the Xoro brand.

Still, it's pretty cool. I have a Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB attached to it and being able to choose from the wide selection of movies on the hard drive beats having to get up and change discs every time.

It sounds really neat, when we can put a lot of our music or movies collection on external drives and simply connect then to our entertainment systems or wireless communication exchanging the data can make it a lot easier. But I will wait a bit to see what 2008 brings!

Thanks guys

[SeeMoreDigital]

I have a Ziova CS505. It has no problems playing re-authored DVDs stored on an (Fat32 formatted) external HDD.

You just store each movie in it's own folder, then navigate to the movies VIDEO_TS.IFO file and away you go.


Cheers

[kikatu]

Hi SeeMoreDigital, will look into the Ziova too, thanks.

[ilovejedd]

I'm looking forward to the Popcorn Hour. If it works as well as advertised, it should be a nice cheap alternative to building a Media Center PC which I had been planning to do.

I'm getting tired of all the restrictions on most SAPs.

[SeeMoreDigital]

I'm looking forward to the Popcorn Hour. If it works as well as advertised, it should be a nice cheap alternative to building a Media Center PC which I had been planning to do.

I'm getting tired of all the restrictions on most SAPs.Sufficed to say, any device based around Sigma's SMP863x series of chip-sets has the capability of playing just about any audio, video and container format - worth bothering about.

However... whether the device manufacturer will put in place the long term resources necessary to modify and tweak their devices firmware will be a different matter though!