Is This What I need for Movies?

[Kate]

Thanks so much to Richard for taking the time (and having the patience) to finally teach me how to convert my DVDs into m4vs at a reasonable resolution.

Much Appreciated!

Now, I have a Sony BDP/S580 bluray/3d/wifi player, which I'm enjoying immensely. I can get netflix, hulu, all kinds of online content (unfortunately I'm a bit limited on my dl capability, but that's another matter).

I can load an m4v on a thumbdrive and stick it in the usb slot and it reads fine, but when I connect an external hard drive to the usb slot, it wont read. I'm assuming I need some kind of a bridge, so I'm wondering, will this work?

http://go.iomega.com/en-us/products/netw...rtner=4760&utm_source=20110527_en_us&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=en_us&utm_content=hero_20110527_en_us#tech_specsItem_tab

If not, what do I need?

Kate

[Chakravartin]

Most DVD/Blu-ray players with USB ports don't support hard drives (yet) and if they do, they typically will only support DOS (FAT 16/32) volumes.

'Did a bit of Googling and found lots of complaints about lack of NTFS support on that device, suggesting to me that it's subject to the FAT-only limitation.

If there's nothing valuable on that hard drive at the moment, try erasing it in the Disk Utility with a MS-DOS (FAT) volume format before connecting it to the Sony player.

*Note that the maximum file-size on a FAT volume is 4GB, which is not big enough for an uncompressed video DVD rip, but should be fine for most MP4/M4V files.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Why not just play the DVD in the Blu-ray player?

[Kate]

Because i live in a small motorhome. My plan is to move all my dvds to digital so i don't have to carry all the physical media

Kate

[digby]

Jealous! Would love to live like that.

And thanks to your links, I got to read all about your rig and your travels... thanks!

[Ombligo]

It sounds like your trying to get DVD player to act as a media server.. wouldn't it make more sense to just use a mini (or media PC) running Plex with the hard drive hooked up hosting everything.

It would play your files, can play an independent DVD (alright not a bluray DVD) and be used as a computer. Space saving and efficent

[freeradical]

An idevice such as the top of the line Roku box can play H.264 files via it's USB port.

http://www.roku.com/roku-products#2

Something like this can also play H.264 files. This also has an eSATA port.

http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Play-Media-Pl...B002MCZJ3C

[Mike V]

Yeah, reformat the drive at FAT32.

I don't know what my model of Sony BLue ray player is but it is similar.
Might be the same as yours, might be a 570.
It works perfectly with a FAT32 formatted USB hard drive.

The limitation is that with FAT32 you have a 4 Gb file size limit.

So sometimes this is annoying especially with HD content.

Also make sure your firmware is up to date on the Sony player as extra file formats have been added with some of the firmware updates.