Philips DVP5960 and USB

[jmikeh]

1379 on General Menu for Firmware version

55 with Tray Open for Firmare BIN


Double check your flash drive and make sure it's formatted FAT32.

Thanks for the firmware trick..

As to my thumbdrive, I formatted in all flavors and it always said Device Not Supported. So something about my Corsair it does not like. If anyone else has the drive and 5960, please let me know if it works for you..

I think I am going to goto Circuit City and plug it into one of the display models and see what it does on another unit..

Here are my firmware results per ytsejam's instruction, worked perfectly.

As to my thumbdrive, it will not work. I have given up and am looking for another drive as I type.

I was able to burn and play a DVD+R double layer disk on this player today. Worked great.
The media was cheap Best Buy Dynex media for all interested..

[horo]

i was watching a movie with subs and i notice that there is a black background around the subs is there anyway to get rid of that? and make the font smaller

[handyguy]

If the hd works as people mentioned, the speed won't matter.

Sometimes for SRT subs to get them to play, esp on that 642, you have to add a ;1

e.g.
film.avi
film.srt;1

It works for some reason.

[baracca]

My dvp5960 reads the divx files from USB but does not play any of them. These played fine when burned. I have tried USB flash and hard drive both formated FAT32. I thought I had a defective unit so I got another but again, same thing. Firmware is the same as the one posted. Any ideas?

Oh BTW, it plays MP3s and jpegs fine so it is doing exactly what the manual says but I expected it to play divx through USB too

[ytsejam]

Philips has updated their sell sheet for this device. It can be found here:http://www.p4c.philips.com/files/d/dvp5960_37/dvp5960_37_pss_aen.pdf and they now list the USB device as being able to play DivX files.

[Virginian]

It's a single partition drive.

UPDATE 3: It appears that while MP3, MPG, and JPG work fine. DivX and XviD will play, but have a small stutter about every 15 seconds, which can be really annoying. I'm not sure what to attribute this to, it could be the USB 1.1 port on the 5960 or it could be the larger hard drive size taking longer to seek. Although, my larger hard drive is a 5400 RPM, quicker seek time, and a larger cache than my smaller 4800 RPM drive. Both are 2.5 inch drives. So I'm thinking it just might be the size of the drive. I'm going to try a 3.5" 7200 RPM and post my results later.

Same here, I noticed this annoying stutter with my 400GB/7200 RPM Western Digital USB external drive, anyway, the good news - I could access across of the 200GB of data stored on this drive.

My guess, USB drive buffer just doesn't have enough memory in order to synchronize relatively fast hard drive with the slow USB 1.1 port. My only hope, some fix in the firmware would work it out.

[Bodyslide]

I would hope they move to a USB2 on their next player and maybe a firewire connection as well....

[FFNogoodnik]

From reading this thread I understand that in order to use an external hard drive with the DVP5960 it needs a USB connector and be formated with FAT32. I am still not sure if it needs to be seen by windows as a removable drive.

I have a 125 gb drive that I would like to use and am in the process of removing the video files that are on it by converting them to Divx and putting the Divx version on another drive. I figure this may take me a couple of days.

My question then becomes the drive is not seen as a removeable drive and as such am I wasting my time in moving all the stuff I have on it now just so I can format the drive as FAT32?

Thanks,
FFNogoodnik

[ytsejam]

From reading this thread I understand that in order to use an external hard drive with the DVP5960 it needs a USB connector and be formated with FAT32. I am still not sure if it needs to be seen by windows as a removable drive.

I have a 125 gb drive that I would like to use and am in the process of removing the video files that are on it by converting them to Divx and putting the Divx version on another drive. I figure this may take me a couple of days.

My question then becomes the drive is not seen as a removeable drive and as such am I wasting my time in moving all the stuff I have on it now just so I can format the drive as FAT32?

Thanks,
FFNogoodnik

I was wrong with my initial results. Your drive should be read by the 5960 with no problems. Just make sure it's formatted FAT32 and if you have an external power source for the enclosure, use it because the 5960 provides very little power through the USB port.

[nspavan]

From reading this thread I understand that in order to use an external hard drive with the DVP5960 it needs a USB connector and be formated with FAT32. I am still not sure if it needs to be seen by windows as a removable drive.

I have a 125 gb drive that I would like to use and am in the process of removing the video files that are on it by converting them to Divx and putting the Divx version on another drive. I figure this may take me a couple of days.

My question then becomes the drive is not seen as a removeable drive and as such am I wasting my time in moving all the stuff I have on it now just so I can format the drive as FAT32?

Thanks,
FFNogoodnik

I was wrong with my initial results. Your drive should be read by the 5960 with no problems. Just make sure it's formatted FAT32 and if you have an external power source for the enclosure, use it because the 5960 provides very little power through the USB port.

Use SwissKnife to format drive (FAT32 format).
http://www.compuapps.com/download/Swissknife/swissknife.htm

[FFNogoodnik]

From reading this thread I understand that in order to use an external hard drive with the DVP5960 it needs a USB connector and be formated with FAT32. I am still not sure if it needs to be seen by windows as a removable drive.

I have a 125 gb drive that I would like to use and am in the process of removing the video files that are on it by converting them to Divx and putting the Divx version on another drive. I figure this may take me a couple of days.

My question then becomes the drive is not seen as a removeable drive and as such am I wasting my time in moving all the stuff I have on it now just so I can format the drive as FAT32?

Thanks,
FFNogoodnik

I was wrong with my initial results. Your drive should be read by the 5960 with no problems. Just make sure it's formatted FAT32 and if you have an external power source for the enclosure, use it because the 5960 provides very little power through the USB port.

Very good The enclosure I have does have an external power supply so, hopefully, I should be set. Thanks for the update.

[youngthile]

i dont know if it has been fully discussed, has it been determined that the drive must appear as a removable device or can it appear as a hard drive?? has anybody gotten one to work that appears as a hard drive??

also, for those of you who have gotten external drives to work what kind of enclosures are you using??

[azuberi80]

Use SwissKnife to format drive (FAT32 format).
http://www.compuapps.com/download/Swissknife/swissknife.htm[/quote]

Nice!! Thats what I came looking for.

[weaseloso]

i dont know if it has been fully discussed, has it been determined that the drive must appear as a removable device or can it appear as a hard drive?? has anybody gotten one to work that appears as a hard drive??

also, for those of you who have gotten external drives to work what kind of enclosures are you using??

Good questions! Also could the hard drive cache size make a difference? Would stuttering disappear with 16MB cache?
Also do the closure manufacturers use different chipsets? I know from my own experience that with IEEE 1394a the Oxford chipset is by far the best. Also I noticed in the customer reviews on the Newegg site that some external boxes play up on USB 1.1 ports.
This enclosure http://www.xpcgear.com/ue318uhcr.html looks interesting and if the card reader and interface with say a 300GB 8MB or 16MB cache hard drive worked it would be great news. I may go for this as there a discount code on Bens Bargains.
Lastly, for now, if you visit a Circuit City there are stacks of green $15 off $100 coupons in the customer service area. They are good in store and at the CC web site but expire 6/26/2006. I think each code is unique. In theory I paid $59.62 for my 5960.

[horo]

I notice that the filenames are weird/different when its listed from the EHD (external hard drive)

for example
Bell - 01 <- filename on computer
BEUAL~ 0 1 <- not exactly same letters but something like that on the dvd player

is there anyway to fix this? Im trying to watch a series and i dont even know which ep is which i have to watch some of it just to tell if im on the right ep

[FFNogoodnik]

I did not have much luck. I have a 120GB hard drive that I used the FAT32Format program to make it a FAT32 disk. All indications are that it was successfull. I put a divx file on the disk but the DVD player did not support it.

The enclosure I have is linked to below, I am looking for an 3.5 enclosure that has worked OR a disk/enclsure combo that has worked. I hope it is not the disk drive I have in it (a MAXTOR DiamondMax Plus 9, 120GB ATA/133, set to master).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145656

Thanks,
Clayton

[nspavan]

I did not have much luck. I have a 120GB hard drive that I used the FAT32Format program to make it a FAT32 disk. All indications are that it was successfull. I put a divx file on the disk but the DVD player did not support it.

The enclosure I have is linked to below, I am looking for an 3.5 enclosure that has worked OR a disk/enclsure combo that has worked. I hope it is not the disk drive I have in it (a MAXTOR DiamondMax Plus 9, 120GB ATA/133, set to master).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145656

Thanks,
Clayton

Try using
http://www.compuapps.com/download/Swissknife/swissknife.htm
Delete existing partition and create FAT32 partition with partition type as primary.

[FFNogoodnik]

I did not have much luck. I have a 120GB hard drive that I used the FAT32Format program to make it a FAT32 disk. All indications are that it was successfull. I put a divx file on the disk but the DVD player did not support it.

The enclosure I have is linked to below, I am looking for an 3.5 enclosure that has worked OR a disk/enclsure combo that has worked. I hope it is not the disk drive I have in it (a MAXTOR DiamondMax Plus 9, 120GB ATA/133, set to master).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145656

Thanks,
Clayton

Try using
http://www.compuapps.com/download/Swissknife/swissknife.htm
Delete existing partition and create FAT32 partition with partition type as primary.

Thanks, I will try it when I get home from work. I do remember another thing, I was only able to make it a logical drive, perhaps this is my problem?

[youngthile]

I did not have much luck. I have a 120GB hard drive that I used the FAT32Format program to make it a FAT32 disk. All indications are that it was successfull. I put a divx file on the disk but the DVD player did not support it.

The enclosure I have is linked to below, I am looking for an 3.5 enclosure that has worked OR a disk/enclsure combo that has worked. I hope it is not the disk drive I have in it (a MAXTOR DiamondMax Plus 9, 120GB ATA/133, set to master).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145656

Thanks,
Clayton

Try using
http://www.compuapps.com/download/Swissknife/swissknife.htm
Delete existing partition and create FAT32 partition with partition type as primary.

i dont really understand what this program is for other than formatting to FAT32...will this enable to 5960 to read the drive even if it is showing up as an external hdd??

[ytsejam]

You guys are making this much more difficult than it is. The drive does NOT have to show up as removable storage in Windows. Just follow these two rules and your good to go:

1. Make sure your drive is formatted FAT32. For drives larger than 32GB use this tool: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm
2. If your drive needs external power, make sure it is powered up and ready to go BEFORE plugging it into the DVP-5960.

[FFNogoodnik]

WOOT!! I got it. SwissKnife got it for me.

ytsejam, I tried using the program you recommended 1st but it did not work for me. I know why now, my hard drive did not have a primary just and extended with a logical. SwissKnife was able to let me change that. I still want to thank you for your help, I know it would have worked for me if I had my drive set up as a primary.

nspavan, Thanks for the SwissKnife suggestion and your help.

To summarize, I think you would need not only a FAT32 formated disk but the disk has to be the primary partition.

Have fun,
Clayton

[youngthile]

awesome, im glad it worked for you...this sucks i gotta go out of town so i wont be able to try until tomorrow night or monday

[weaseloso]

Finally I have had success in getting an external hard drive to work. I tried a different enclosure and a different hard drive. The 30GB I had originally tried was a 4200RPM and the USB port on the 5960 was not providing enough juice. It seems the slower spinning hard drives require a little more voltage. I tried a 5400RPM and it worked like a charm. Thanks for the heads up Bodyslide.

Ytsejam I have tried 3 different generic enclosures and the stuttering is bad! Please could you let me know the model description of the one you have had most luck with and the format of the movies you are using it for. Thanks for any advice.

[Bodyslide]

Here is the one I put a 100gb maxtor drive in.

http://www.xpcgear.com/ue350au2bk.html

[weaseloso]

Thanks Bodyslide, nice enclosure. None of the ones I tried had Cypress Chipset's so this may explain the stutter problem I have. Just wish the shipping costs weren't so high at XPCgear. I will try one of these as soon as I can.

[weaseloso]

Just noticed that today there is a coupon code on Bens Bargains site for this enclosure with the Cypress Chipset so this makes the final price $23.20 for me which is good news!

[Virginian]

Finally I have had success in getting an external hard drive to work. I tried a different enclosure and a different hard drive. The 30GB I had originally tried was a 4200RPM and the USB port on the 5960 was not providing enough juice. It seems the slower spinning hard drives require a little more voltage. I tried a 5400RPM and it worked like a charm. Thanks for the heads up Bodyslide.

Ytsejam I have tried 3 different generic enclosures and the stuttering is bad! Please could you let me know the model description of the one you have had most luck with and the format of the movies you are using it for. Thanks for any advice.

WDXUB3200JB (Western Digital 320 GB, USB 2.0) worked fine, no stuttering. But the same WD, just 400GB instead of 320GB apparently stuttered, what a mystery!

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=167&language=en

My only guess, 400GB disk was full, while 320GB disk had only one AVI file on it.


P.S. Don't buy it from the manufacture’s site, Amazon has better deal.

[Rowen]

I notice that the filenames are weird/different when its listed from the EHD (external hard drive)

for example
Bell - 01 <- filename on computer
BEUAL~ 0 1 <- not exactly same letters but something like that on the dvd player

is there anyway to fix this? Im trying to watch a series and i dont even know which ep is which i have to watch some of it just to tell if im on the right ep

I'm using a 1gb flash drive, loaded with episodes of an old show, and not only does it do a similar thing as stated above in that it alters the filename, but it also loads the episodes out of order (and yes they have sequential numbers in the filename). Any idea what this is about and if there is any solution? Thanks.

[jagabo]

Many Divx/DVD players don't support long filenames so you're seeing automatically generated 8.3 versions of the filenames. Use short format filenames if you need to see the full name. Start your names with episode numbers and they will sort properly.

[azuberi80]

I was able to get my external hard drive to work. The drive is actually a maxtor 80gb usb drive. I replaced the drive with a 300gb maxtor 7200 drive.

I used swissknife to create one huge fat 32 partition and then I threw all my divx files on there.

As soon as I hit the USB button on my remote my drive showed up! I get no stuttering at all. I was having all types of stuttering and freezing up when I burned these files to dvd discs but playing them through the drive is really smooth.

I recommend this dvd player to anyone with a large divx/xvid collection that doesnt want to waste time and money burning movies to disc anymore.