connecting external hard drive to blu ray player then accessing data off it

[julie_152]

Hi

I recently bought 1 terabyte external hard drive,which I intended to connect to blu ray player via usb port, and use to play hd films through. However,when I connect, the blu ray cannot see the hard drive. I've read that the only solution is to create a FAT32 partition on the hard drive,but I've also heard that FAT32 won't hold files bigger than 4GB (most of the hd films (1080p) are approx 8GB+).Therefore that's not really a solution.....does anyone have any better ideas?,as I'm prob gonna have to send this hard drive back, and buy an Archos hard drive or similar instead.

Julie

[Baldrick]

Authoring? Nope. Moving you to our blu-ray player section.

[ranosb]

The blu-ray player is not going to play the files directly, unless they are mpg, avchd or blu-ray format.
I have a 1TB drive loaded with Mkv files, but I convert them to avchd and burn to DVDRW's to playback on my sony blu-ray player...

[julie_152]

Hi again

My blu ray player will play mkv files via usb port tho, so I need advice on getting the blu bray player to recognise the hard drive connected to it.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

Julie

[jman98]

Your other post referring the Western Digital media player got locked while I was responding. Here's my response, which makes better sense if you refer to that locked post. And that post was different enough from this that it shouldn't have been locked, in my opinion. Anyway...

No, it is absolutely NOT true that the WD media player won't play DTS files. I have that player. It totally supports DTS. However, it cannot decode DTS, so you have to have a receiver that can decode DTS via optical output from the WD to the receiver. If you have such a receiver then you will be fine with the WD device as the WD player will simply bitstream the DTS out to your receiver and let the receiver decode it.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "Most HD films (are) encoded with DTS". That's up to the person who did the encoding. I've seen plenty that use AC3.

There are rumors that the next generation WD player will be able to decode DTS itself, but we don't know when that player will be released. In time for Christmas maybe? Who knows?

[julie_152]

Thanks jman98

Appreciate the info....can I just ask another question re WD hd media player?If I am planning to connect media player to blu ray player via usb,am I classing the blu ray player as the receiver?There is a function within the player that can be selected titled "dts re-encode" - would I have to apply this every time I play a DTS audio file?

Thanks again for answering my earlier questions

Julie

[johns0]

If the blu-ray player can downmix(re-encode) the dts to pcm then it will do that all the time with dts audio if you enable it.

[jman98]

Thanks jman98

Appreciate the info....can I just ask another question re WD hd media player?If I am planning to connect media player to blu ray player via usb,am I classing the blu ray player as the receiver?There is a function within the player that can be selected titled "dts re-encode" - would I have to apply this every time I play a DTS audio file?

Thanks again for answering my earlier questions

Julie

I haven't tried it, but your plan shouldn't work. The WD is a USB only player, so your plan requires a WD USB port to play the file and then stream it via USB to the BluRay player. I don't think there is any chance that will work. I think BluRay players are required to be able to decode DTS themselves, so I'm not sure what "DTS re-encode" means. I have never heard of that function. I've heard of something usually called "Legacy audio". Could that be it? Legacy audio means that the output device can't decode DTS-HD, so the player sends a DTS core (completely compatible with old DTS) as output instead.

To use the WD player, you will have to do one of the following.
1) Get a receiver that can decode DTS.
2) Wait for the next generation WD player that can do its own DTS decoding, but we don't know when it will come out.
3) Re-encode the audio yourself to AC3.

[julie_152]

Hi again

So are you saying that the WD player doesn't have a usb port, or it can't stream to blu ray player via usb port?

Not aware of "legacy audio" function within blu ray player.....I suspect the "dts re-encode" function would decode dts audio if playing a disc,not sure if it would decode audio via usb?

Julie

[sitlet]

Hi again

My blu ray player will play mkv files via usb port tho, so I need advice on getting the blu bray player to recognise the hard drive connected to it.

you answered yourself in the first post. the hard drive must be formatted using FAT, meaning the largest file can be about 4gb. yes its annoying, but that what most players accept. its not the hard drives fault, its yours for not researching this before you purchased the drive and player.

[johns0]

I'm not sure what "DTS re-encode" means. I have never heard of that function. I've heard of something usually called "Legacy audio". Could that be it? Legacy audio means that the output device can't decode DTS-HD, so the player sends a DTS core (completely compatible with old DTS) as output instead.

.

Dts re-encode means the blu-ray players downmixes dts to pcm,its common in most blu-ray players.

[boisvertray]

There are some blueray players like sony that can not recognize large memory external hard drives. Sony is one of these. The Lg blueray players work fine. I have my 2tb hook to mine, and it works great

[jntaylor63]

I 2nd the LG Blu-Ray Players. Not only can they read NTFS formatted drives, they can play lots of video formats:

MKV-HD (H.264 with Dolby and DTS)
Divx
Divx Plus-HD (with 5.1 aac)
AVI
MP4

I purchased two for my in-laws and I am getting an other for my wife's store and ripping movies to a portable hard drive. That way when our kids are there after-school (and home work is complete) they can watch their movies and no more shuffling discs!

All the newer LG players can do this, even the cheap 65.00 ones at Wal-Mart.

btw, can some one recommend a good 1TB 2.5 external drive?

[dylz]

edited.

[gplacek]

This is info for setting up and using the Sony BDP-S470 Blu-ray Disc Player to use a USB hard drive to play your music and video collection.

My system is a Gateway NV Laptop running Windows7. Some or all of this will work for other operating systems as well.

First off, where are your video and audio files stored now? Are they on the HD with your OS? Are they on an external drive? How is that drive formatted?

Sony BDP-S470 Blu-ray Disc Player will ONLY read files from a FAT32 formatted USB hard drive. (or from a CD or DVD, Blu-ray USB stick etc..)(but this is about HD's,

so i'm not going into that.)

If you already have an external drive you wish to use for your BDP that's fine, however, if it is not formatted to FAT32 you will need to move all the data off of it

before you format. Formatting WILL DESTROY ALL DATA ON THE DISK!!!! So you might just want to go out and purchase a new one. $100 will get you about 500GB of space.

Windows alone will not be able to format the drive correctly. You will need a seperate program to do this. I use guiformat.exe. This is a free download.

guiformat.exe -

When you buy a new drive it will most likley be formatted to NTFS. If this is the case you are ready to use guiformat.exe to reformat the drive to FAT32. Windows will

not format FAT32 over 30GB. Windows will format larger than this to NTFS and too FATex. FATex will NOT work with your BDP.

Run guiformat.exe on the NTFS formatted drive to reformat to FAT32. The only thing that guiformat will do is format drives to FAT32.
Running guiformat.exe will format the drive. This will DESTROY ALL DATA ON THE DRIVE THAT YOU SELECT.

Once this is done, you're almost done.

Copy over .MP3 files and .MP4 video files. For a complete list of file types that are supported on your BDP look on page 32 of the BDP-S470 manual.

Some video formats supported are .mpg, .mpeg, .m2ts, .mp4, .divx (.avi does not always work!!!) .wmv, and .asf
Some audio formats supported are .mp3, .m4a, .wma, .wav
Also .jpg and .jpeg are supported.

That being said, you can use itunes to convert files to .mp3 from most other audio formats. On request I can give more info on this topic.

As for video files, I use the .mp4 format. For converting large numbers of video files to .mp4 I use "HandBrake-0.9.5-Win_GUI.exe"

That should do it for now. Please let me know if this was helpful or if other info is needed. I will try to answer any questions.

Happy BDP USB HDD Playing!

Cheers,

Greg

PS. Sony BDP does exactly what it claims to do. Only reads FAT32 format.

[dylz]

In my case my bluray play's fat32 and NTFS and the hard drive is NTFS so no problem with any movies, For anyone trying to get larger than 4gb to play on fat32 drives I haver no experience with them but when I hav my movies in a folder (unnamed or named) lets say 3movies all different names then when the first has finished my bluray automatically plays the second the the third so you's can try to split the movies into 4gb sizes or just under to be safe tan put in a folder to see if it plays in sequence.

[gplacek]

dtlz,

What model do you have?

g

[dylz]

the cheap wd 1tb series : I got two wd mybook essential 1 is 3moths old usb2.0 and the 2nd is the same but a week old and usb 2+3.0 for faster speed .

They old cost about $70 to $100 quite cheap IMO.

[gplacek]

dtlz,

Sorry, I meant what Blu-ray model do you have?

g

[biiggmike23]

I have a WD 1TB harddrive that I use to watch MKV files all the time with my LG Blu-Ray player, as of last week some MKV files do not play, it shows it on the menu but when I click on it it simply goes to the next movie. I have tried everything I can think of to make the movie play and it does not. Does anybody have any idea what this is? It is really frustrating me. Also why is it XBOX 360 and PS3 will not read an external hard drive? I want to watch my movies! HEEEELp

[dylz]

Hi bigmike, since aI have the wd HD and an LG bluray too I think your problem might be the AVC level is above high@4.1 which isn't allowed, I find it happen to me be but it's no problem since all you have to do is trick it by using tsmuxer, the method is open the mkv in tsmuxer and tick Change level under general options and change it toop 4.1 or 4.0, select demux and then open the h.264 and aac file with mkvtoolnix when it ass for framerate type in the orginal framerate which can be found in the tsmuxer window under info or using mediainfo and remux it back to mkv.

[biiggmike23]

Hi bigmike, since aI have the wd HD and an LG bluray too I think your problem might be the AVC level is above high@4.1 which isn't allowed, I find it happen to me be but it's no problem since all you have to do is trick it by using tsmuxer, the method is open the mkv in tsmuxer and tick Change level under general options and change it toop 4.1 or 4.0, select demux and then open the h.264 and aac file with mkvtoolnix when it ass for framerate type in the orginal framerate which can be found in the tsmuxer window under info or using mediainfo and remux it back to mkv.

I downloaded the programs you mentioned but when I tried to open the file in tsmuxer I don ont see the option u are mentioning. Is there a write up on how to do this possibly? Thank you.

[dylz]

Long time no reply lol, the tools are under videohelp tools section, tsmuxer got discontinued and taken down by the author and mkvtoolnix is everywhere just google it... i'll upload tsmuxer. To be clear open the mkv in tsmuxerGUI ( http://www.mediafire.com/?mh4d49996gu0v6m )
click on the video and change level will become available change it to something like 4.0/4.1 and select to demux it then open the video and audio in mkvtoolnix ( mkvmergeGUI ) and ark the framrate what the original was ex:23.976 and mux back to a mkv.

[biiggmike23]

Long time no reply lol, the tools are under videohelp tools section, tsmuxer got discontinued and taken down by the author and mkvtoolnix is everywhere just google it... i'll upload tsmuxer. To be clear open the mkv in tsmuxerGUI ( http://www.mediafire.com/?mh4d49996gu0v6m )
click on the video and change level will become available change it to something like 4.0/4.1 and select to demux it then open the video and audio in mkvtoolnix ( mkvmergeGUI ) and ark the framrate what the original was ex:23.976 and mux back to a mkv.


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Thank you man! I tried this but with almost every movie i tried I got this error message:
Matroska parse error: invlaid h264 NAL unit size. NAL unit truncated."

??? Have no idea what that is about?

[dylz]

Never had that before , sounds to me like the original mkv is damaged so what i'd do is open the mkv in mkvtoolnix and remux just select start muxing at the bottom and try the new mkv in tsmuxer, actually when do you get the error? is it when you demuxwith tsmuxer, opening in tsmuxer or remuxing with mkvmerge? if you can't open it in tsmuxer you can download mkvextractGUI2 (google it) to use it extarct from the zip and place the exe file in mkvtoolnix directory under program files creat a shorcut on desktop or start menu, to run it start mkv extract, drag and drop the mkv and press extarct that easy the drop the video (h.264 file) in tsmuxer change the level, demux it and mux in mkvmerge.

[jenna_128]

I have a 1 TB eternal hard drive that I am trying to run video through onto my Sony Blu-ray player.
I have having ZERO success!! I feel like I have tried everything.
It is formatted to Fat 32 already and still nothing. I was in a local electronic store and asked if it was possible and of course nobody could tell me how to do it but told me that it IS possible. I don't want to have to buy a different blu-ray player if I can avoid it.
Can someone help please?! And in simple explanations...
Thanks!!!

[dylz]

It would help if we knew the model no....
First assumptions: 1. It might not support fat32 only ntfs, dw you can reformat. 2. Poorly encoded media, you might have to change a few settings so if you want help we need some more details.

[jenna_128]

whoops! sorry, I guess that would help!! The sony Blu-ray model number is BDP-S560.
Thank you!!!

[dylz]

Sorry but all I can find is it can decode all hd audio formats, read bluray,dvd,cd and play mp3 songs. If you put a mp3 on a usb and it works but mkv or avi don't then I would take it back.

Edit: I believe this is the newer version and can play all formats you should need so i'd assume your one can too but since there's no info on the site as it's discontinued you'll have to test yourself or google it.

Newer player - BDP-S580 : http://www.sonystyle.ca/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=20153&catalog...specifications

[jenna_128]

ok. ya i see that the new one can. I just don't want to have to buy ANOTHER blu ray player. and we've had this one for a couple years now and it's still great. just wanted to try get away from having to purchase another one.
i couldn't find any info on running it through our current on either....i'm lost! I know that LG has one that works as my brother has it and has the same external hard drive and it works, again, wanted to try get away with not having to purchase another one.......