Any HARDDRIVE based divx players?

[DVantrease]

Hi, I was wondering if there are any standalone divx players that use a HARD DRIVE to store movies, rather than disc. Something along the lines of a modded xbox, but cheaper and specifically made for divx movie storage/playback. I know there are lots of disc players that support divx, but was hoping maybe someone has made a harddrive based one. Thanks!

[jman98]

Both of these streaming media players do contain hard drives and can play Divx.

http://www.popcornhour.com
http://www.istarhd.com

The iStar has some reviews on its website by outside parties. The first one is really in depth and will tell you exactly what it can and can't do. The Popcorn Hour box and the iStar use the same decoding chip and should basically be considered functionally identical as far as I can tell. I don't remember the disk drive capacity of either, so I can't comment on whether or not the drives they have will really meet your needs for long term storage or not. I believe there might be some ability to play external disk drives on these devices through various connectors like SATA, so you might be able to store your movies to an external hard drive and just plug it in as you want.

Some standalone DVD players can play files via external hard drives, but there is a catch - the drive MUST be formatted as FAT32. NTFS won't work.
Standalone DVD players will be much fussier about what they will play in terms of Divx than either the iStar or Popcorn Hour boxes. For example, some DVD players that support Divx won't play packed bit stream files.

[CDan]

The Oppo players will play DIVX from either USB stick or external USB2 hard drive. As far as I can see they will play most any DIVX, I've tried them with high bitrates and AC3 audio and they work fine.

[DVantrease]

I found something that is more along the lines of what I was thinking. They have 'HDD Media Players' that are basically external harddrive enclosures, but you can connect them to your TV and play movies (divx, etc), music, pictures etc. Go to eBay or Geeks and search for 'HDD divx player' to see them. They are cheap too (you supply your own hdd). I'll probably get one, and will post some comments then.

[Timmychuck]

look at these

http://www.mvixusa.com/
http://www.pc4usa.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=66

[jman98]

The Oppo players will play DIVX from either USB stick or external USB2 hard drive. As far as I can see they will play most any DIVX, I've tried them with high bitrates and AC3 audio and they work fine.

You should download the Divx test CD at
http://divxtest.surdvd.com/What-is-DivxTest-Where-can-I-find.html
and see how the Oppo does. I'm not knocking the Oppo at all as I am thinking about getting one myself, but I'm sure there are some encoding options it won't support. You might be interested in learning what your player will and won't play.

[jagabo]

Or you can look at:

http://divxtest.surdvd.com/form/divxtest2_list.php?lang=en

[CDan]

The Oppo players will play DIVX from either USB stick or external USB2 hard drive. As far as I can see they will play most any DIVX, I've tried them with high bitrates and AC3 audio and they work fine.

You should download the Divx test CD at
http://divxtest.surdvd.com/What-is-DivxTest-Where-can-I-find.html
and see how the Oppo does. I'm not knocking the Oppo at all as I am thinking about getting one myself, but I'm sure there are some encoding options it won't support. You might be interested in learning what your player will and won't play.

Looks like fun, I'll give it a whirl.

Edit: Looks like my Oppo 980 has already been well tested: http://divxtest.surdvd.com/form/divxtest2_view.php?id_507=on

[handyguy]

What about a Philips 3575?

[jman98]

CDan - Thanks for the link. I looked in another place on the site and couldn't find any Oppo info. I'd say based on the test results that the Oppo did pretty much what it should be expected to support based on the specs. I'm amazed that it supported the MP4 container at all, even though most of those tests failed. Not all did.

Dvantrease - Sorry for hijacking your thread a little, but I hope that maybe my first post and some of the others have been useful to you.

[jagabo]

What about a Philips 3575?

http://divxtest.surdvd.com/form/divxtest2_view.php?lang=eng&id_486=1

I didn't think that was still available. But Amazon still sells it.

[nic2k4]

Check out my post on this link:

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic335308.html

This company just released some new models, even one that will record to the HDD, and most of their players will play ripped DVD's like on the disc:

www.hantechdigital.com

PS I got the Eureka 350 and love it. As mentionned above those players have issues with some encoding options. Easy enough to fix with AVI recomp for internet stuff or just enable standalone player mode in AutoGK. I have a 500GB drive in mine (it will take up to 1 TB) and I've been slowly converting my DVD's to XVID so I can store even more movies.

[DVantrease]

Yeah that's one thing I was just wondering about, how well they play all the different 'flavors' of divx out there. I read one post somewhere that said alot of the players, even new ones, won't play divx 6 files, even though that's been out for well over a year (although I don't remember when that message was posted). That would obviously be a big concern, as I'm sure almost all divx movies out there now are divx 6. And from the players I've seen online, they don't list this in the specs, they just say 'plays divx'. So I'm really hoping for some exact recommendations, or at least some general guidelines on what to look for.

I think the whole idea of a standalone HDD-based divx player is great! But I will be price shopping. I've seen prices anywhere from $40 to $200+ (not including HDD). Plus I'll have to decide between 2.5", 3.5", IDE or SATA.

[DVantrease]

As mentionned above those players have issues with some encoding options. Easy enough to fix with AVI recomp for internet stuff...

nic2k4, I just want to make sure I understand you correctly. If I get a standalone HDD player, and it has problems playing my downloaded AVI files (divx 6 or whatever reason), I can run it thru AVI Recomp and then it should play, correct?

[jagabo]

Yeah that's one thing I was just wondering about, how well they play all the different 'flavors' of divx out there. I read one post somewhere that said alot of the players, even new ones, won't play divx 6 files, even though that's been out for well over a year (although I don't remember when that message was posted).

Divx6 is the same as Divx5 as far as video decompression is concerned. It even uses the same fourcc, DX50, so a program can't even tell if the video was compressed with Divx5 or Divx6.

Divx6 also adds features like menus and chapters. Players need to be "Divx Ultra" certified to use those features. But non-ultra players can usually play the video in such files. They may need to be renamed .AVI instead of .DIVX.

There are some encoding options of both Divx5, Divx6, and Xvid that many players cannot handle: GMC, QPEL, multiple b-frames with packed bitstream, frame sizes over 720x480 29.97 fps or 720x576 25 fps (ie bigger than standard definition), very high bitrates, etc. Some of these problems have to do with the decoder chips' inability to deal with those features (ie, no firmware update will be able fix the problem) and some is just sloppy programming by the manufacturers. These files can always be fixed by reencoding, and in the case of large frame sizes, reducing the frame size and reencoding.

[DVantrease]

Ok, I just wanted to verify, because I did actually see some HDD media players that had "Supports Divx 3.x-5.x" listed in their specs, which makes me wonder how they would handle a div 6.x file. I can always reencode if needed, but would be great to avoid that if possible.

[nic2k4]

="DVantrease
nic2k4, I just want to make sure I understand you correctly. If I get a standalone HDD player, and it has problems playing my downloaded AVI files (divx 6 or whatever reason), I can run it thru AVI Recomp and then it should play, correct?

Yeah, that's its purpose, remove Qpels and GMC and enable VBV buffer management.

[GrayStrickland]

I'm not sure what the OP had in mind, but lately I've seen a huge crop of 2.5" hard disk drive enclosures which are supposed to play a Divx or other Mpeg4 file directly to your tv (no pc required). Here is just one example, but I've found dozens of current listings for basically the same device:

Silver-2-5-Portable-HDD-DivX-MP3-MPEG4-TV-Media-Player

It outputs to a tv (via a composite connection) or computer monitor (via vga connector). It acts as ordinary external usb drive. It has play/pause, volume +/- etc. buttons on the case, plus a wireless remote.

Questions:

** It's not clear whether this takes an IDE or SATA drive. I've seen dozens of similar listings (not all on ebay), but not one of them states whether it's compatible with IDE or SATA. Surely it can't be both.
** It's not clear what the maximum bitrate it can handle is. If I buy one, it'll be solely to take the kids' video library in the car (my Odyssey has a composite video input jack) without having to shuffle dvd discs in the car.

At only about $30, it's hard to go terribly wrong, but I am curious if anyone else has tried one. I've tried googling the videohelp site, but can't seem to formulate a decent query to find one... whatever the heck you call these... usb hdd enclosure/player thingys.