How to transfer HD vidoes to external hard drive and play them back

[sean00]

Hi,

I'm new to HD and videos and wanted to know how to transfer videos from Canon HF R300 camera to an external hard drive.

Can I then somehow replay these videos again on my HDTV without converting the video? The video is produced in AVCHD from the canon camera.

Thanks,

Sean

[Cornucopia]

Thanks for the info on the camera model, but you only went 1/2 way: we would need the model # of your TV also...

Take you SD/SDHD/SDXC memory card and put it in a compatible card reader that connects to your PC and copy the files (via Windows Explorer, etc) to a hard drive. Better to use a 2nd HDD, not your boot drive. If external, is better to use a real fast buss (USB3, eSATA, Thunderbolt) rather than a medium-fast buss (USB2, Firewire), but considering you are recording AVCHD, you could probably still get by with the latter without serious stuttering during playback. You OF COURSE want to make sure the buss interface, the HDD's capacity and the Filesystem formatting are all totally compatible with both your PC and your TV. Not knowing the model yet, I'm assuming you have a smart-enough TV to accept media from an external HDD...
Then, compatibility depends on the TV's internal "player" app.

There is the possibility that you won't have to do ANYTHING, or it's possible that you just need to demux & remux to a different container (without losing quality), or even possible that you need to convert to a more compatible filetype (losing a little quality). More info from you will help pin this last part down.

Scott