Philips DVP5982 USB FYI

[403gl]

I dont think it's been brought up yet, but after reading through many posts in this forum and others many have concluded that if you were to connect your FAT-formatted harddrive to the player, it cannot be powered through the same USB connection.

Can't confirm the brand, but my buddy owns a portable that has one of those Y-shaped dual USB connectors. One is for data and one for power. He has some weird SONGYA brand dvd player from China that has a rear USB connector that is capable of playing movies through USB key.

So we tried connecting the hard drive with the just the one data USB plugged into the rear of the player, and predictably nothing showed up on the TV and the drive didn't boot up. I noticed that he has an HD PVR by motorola, the one with front A/V ports and USB port (i wonder what its for??). So i plugged the power cable from the hard drive into the front of the PVR and voila,...power. Read all compatible files on the hard drive.

Although this wasn't tested on a DVP5982,...Im curious if anyone with this equpiment can verify this, because I own a DVP5982 and am considering to get an HD PVR and a seagate freeagent go with the dual USB connectors.

[Krispy Kritter]

The second USB connector is for power. A single connector doesn't supply enough power for the drive to operate (as you noted above). Your best bet, knowing you will be using the ext HDD on the 5982, would be to just purchase a HDD with it's own power supply. You could experience operational issues getting power from two separate pieces of hardware.

[TBoneit]

Exactly I would be very carefull hooking up to two different pieces of equipment via USB like that. What you are doing is hooking up two different 5 volt lines into the external drive. Some chance of damaging the equipment. USB is not that sturdy. I've seen people damage all the USB ports in a computer with a defective printer..

[403gl]

oh ok...thanks for the heads up

[t3rm3y]

hi, can you confirm if this worked? i have a dvp5960 and the free agent go hardrive, but it wont read anything on the drive (plus drive is ntfs, i dont know how to make it FAT32 if that would change anyhting?) but if your dvp5982 works with the freeagent go i will purchase that dd player. thanks

[jman98]

Changing your disk drive from NTFS to FAT32 will involve a destructive reformat of the disk and you will lose all data on it. Nobody has yet reported any DVD player with a USB port that is capable of reading NTFS formatted devices.

To format the drive under Windows, connect it to your PC, boot the PC so it finds the drive. Click on My Computer and right click on the drive. Select Format and under File System choose FAT32. I don't have Vista so these instructions may be somewhat different under Vista, but they should be correct for XP (I checked) and below (I didn't check).