Looking For A Video Player To Play Avi's Off A 500gb Hard Drive (usb)

[billstarbuck]

I have a dvd/usb player that plays movies on a 16GB usb drive - its great but cannot work with my 500GB WD hard drive. A few months ago I took the HD into stores (Lotus and Macro) and tried it on a few but it did not work.

Does anyone know of a device or player that can play the movies off my 500GB HD? I do not need it to play DVDs.

Any ideas would be welcome.

[saorsa]

I have a dvd/usb player that plays movies on a 16GB usb drive - its great but cannot work with my 500GB WD hard drive. A few months ago I took the HD into stores (Lotus and Macro) and tried it on a few but it did not work.

Does anyone know of a device or player that can play the movies off my 500GB HD? I do not need it to play DVDs.

Any ideas would be welcome.

I bought an Acer pc base unit...small form factor with HDMI and DVI out and 1Tb hard drive and use that to play avi media etc. works perfectly and the sound quality using the digital out is very good (although i am not an audiophile).

[Tywais]

It's possible the players require it to be formatted in FAT32 and not NTFS. However FAT32 has a file size limit of 4GB which will prevent DVD9 or 1080 (mkv format) movies but is fine for the vast majority of avi files.

[leftnose]

I have a dvd/usb player that plays movies on a 16GB usb drive - its great but cannot work with my 500GB WD hard drive. A few months ago I took the HD into stores (Lotus and Macro) and tried it on a few but it did not work.

Does anyone know of a device or player that can play the movies off my 500GB HD? I do not need it to play DVDs.

Any ideas would be welcome.

You didn't mention what your current dvd player brand/model is.

Lotus and Macro tend to carry the lower end, slightly older models about to go out of production which may not support the higher capacity external drives.

I would recommend taking your WD 500gb external and trying it on:

Philips DVP3360 or (PowerBuy has this listed on their site, but local Consumer Electronics shops might have it as well.)

Pioneer DV420V (HomePro has this model and PowerBuy has it listed on their site)

which have come out this year and may support the larger drives although I read somewhere that they may not support every brand/model of high capacity external drive.

[d0ndela]

You could have a look at this device: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=681 also from Western Digital, it's called TV Mini and does exactly what you are looking for.

Price is around 4,000 baht.

[H2oDunc]

Have a check on how the files are stored on the HDD. on mine if they are in a folder cntaining the AVI or MPEG4 then my dvd player will not recognise them. If I take them out of the folder it sees them straight away. Just an idea

[robblok]

You could have a look at this device: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=681 also from Western Digital, it's called TV Mini and does exactly what you are looking for.

Price is around 4,000 baht.

I use it and its a great thing to use. Just connect my usb drive to it and its a go

[billstarbuck]

Thanks everyone - lots of good ideas. I ended up buying Lenovo Enigma HD-849 from Central at Future Park. It was the only one that advertised the ability to play from an external Hard Drive. It does work, though it is a bit quirky and so far, on one avi file the whole player restarts. The same file works fine when on a USB drive versus the HD. Overall I'm satisfied. As for the quality of the unit - we'll see. I've had non name brands that last a few months and the DVD player breaks. That's largely why I only play avi files now - no moving parts (sort of). My child doesn't care about quality at all.

I like the WD HD player - but this way I get a disk player also.