Philips DVP5960 and USB

[BiggerJim]

This link may help. http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/c5545765-da9b-41e4-8fd2-f1f83f9a61401033.mspx

I was hopeful. That article looked good. But still only the option of ntfs. I am using a cheap Ngear enclosure. I might pull the drive out and plug it into the computer and see if there is the option for fat 32. I do not want a seprate operating system just for dumping stuff onto a hard drive. Thanks for the link, it looked promising.

[Goofproof]

Info: I bought (5) My Book 320 Gb to use with my Fleet of DVP5960's, yesterday I bought a My Book 500 Gb, at Wal-Mart for under $150, It also worked flawless out of the box, I now have it filled up with Divx. I love it when a plan comes together, Now I guess I need to get another. I also got a DVP5982, but haven't had time to see if it plays as good as the DVP5960. Jim

[acid_burn]

FYI - My Book 500GB will be on sale starting tomorrow @ Staples - $134

[Goofproof]

The only was you could beat that would be if they used a Seagate Drive. Jim I run down and get another thanks.

[BiggerJim]

I managed to get my cheap Ngear portable hard drive formatted to fat 32 in Vista which was not easy. I downloaded the latest version of Maxblast software and it was very simple. The drive seems to work perfectly on the 5960. It is a maxtor 40gig drive. I believe the software only works with Maxtor drives but it is based on Acronis true image I believe. I even disconnected my boot drive and tried the fdisk on win98 startup disk but vista would not recognize it. I do not know why something so simple seemed so hard.

[luiew09]

My Seagate "Free agent GO" doesn't work ("device not supported")on DVP5982..
Does anyone have Seagate "Free agent GO" working on DVP5960?

[RabidDog]

You could booot your PC using a "live" Linux cd/dvd and then do your formatting from there. You can do anything in Linux. Not sure what the command would be tho. Anybody else help ?
mount hde /fstab hde fat32 or some is it "expellius NtFS, Formatty FAT32" (in a H.P. stylee)

[acid_burn]

Hello, I purchased the My Book Drive, It works great, my only gripe is the recycle bin, I delete it and it comes back, and when I hook up the drive into the player, the recycle bin shows up as a folder, it would be nice if I could delete it and not have it comeback, is there a way to do this?

Thanks.

[pankamo]

A bit off-topic but when i put xvid-movies in my dvd-player (philips dvp 5980, its quite the same as 5960) the titles of different episodes are very short and its hard to see the difference from the different titles in the list because its only the first letters of the sentence of each title that is readable. Is there any way to see the whole title in the list, maybe make size of the font smaller in some way?

[jagabo]

when i put xvid-movies in my dvd-player (philips dvp 5980, its quite the same as 5960) the titles of different episodes are very short and its hard to see the difference from the different titles in the list because its only the first letters of the sentence of each title that is readable. Is there any way to see the whole title in the list, maybe make size of the font smaller in some way?

There are hacked firmwares available for the 5960 that allow longer filenames from DVD and CD, but not from the USB port. I don't know if any exist for the 5982 yet.

[sarveshvaity]

Is there anyway to play a WMV file in this thing? Also when i try to see pictures from either a DVD or USB drive, the picture kind of loads very slow. the picture does not come as a whole thing. It comes more like "line by line". Please help.

[TBoneit]

Play a WMV file requires encoding to Divx or DVD for example.

Not real likely that you will ever see a inexpensive player support WMV due to licensing costs.

WMVs I play thru the Computer to the TV and live with the lack of a remote or if I really want to use a remote I convert to Divx or DVD using TMPGEnc DVD Author 3 (TDA 3).

Pictures are slow thats life. If I want fast I play them to the TV through the computer. In my case I use the TV for TV and computer monitor so no biggie.

[pankamo]

Hello again,

I have noticed lately that problems with audio sync appear when I play divx-movies on my dvd-player (5980, but its quite the same player as 5960). The sync problem can appear both while playing movies from the flash memory and from dvd-roms. The sync problem grows bigger and bigger during the movie and can be really annoying.

Is there any option to fix this or something? The strange thing is that I didnt notice the sync problem at the beginning (the dvd-player is 2 months old). The same movies that has sync-problems on the dvd-player works great on the computer without sync-problems.

Can I solve this problem in some way?

[TBoneit]

Fix the audio. They could have VBR audio.

Try the movies that worked OK 2 months ago. My guess is that they will still play OK. It is something in the Divx movie you are playing now.

There are tutorials here on how to fix VBR audio.

[Grammaton]

Here's my 2cent with USB compatability for DVP5982.

Good: WD My Book 500GB Essential USB

Bad: WD My Book 320GB Premium USB/eSATA

Would have been nice to connect the 320gb HD to the player using USB and to computer using eSATA. Anyone tried the USB/Firewire version of My Book? Maybe the player can't read SATA drives?

[Goofproof]

I have (4) My Book Essential USB 2.0 320 GB, and (2) My Book Essential USB 2.0 500GB, They all work great on my DVP 5960's, I have (5).

I imagine the problem comes from the fact the premium has a sata hook up too. I would guess the guts are a different chipset inside.

I have ran into this with my ARGOSY units, everytime you reorder there are little changes in them, some work some don't, hit and miss. The printing is different, probably the chipset is too.
(Bummer) Jim

[Goofproof]

Fix the audio. They could have VBR audio.

Try the movies that worked OK 2 months ago. My guess is that they will still play OK. It is something in the Divx movie you are playing now.

There are tutorials here on how to fix VBR audio.

Like you say it's probably the file, I ran into some that were ripped poorly, I solved it by only downloading files from people who made them correctly.

If you read the manuel for the player, I think there is a way to sync to audio to the picture, I don't know anything about it, but I saw it while fooling with the controls. Jim

[pankamo]

Fix the audio. They could have VBR audio.

Try the movies that worked OK 2 months ago. My guess is that they will still play OK. It is something in the Divx movie you are playing now.

There are tutorials here on how to fix VBR audio.

Yeah youre right, the movies I played two months ago still works great! But isnt it a little weird when the movies runs fine on the computer? Could it have something to do with burn speed? But I doubt that because other Divx-movies that works fine are burnt with the same speed as them with messy sync.

Goofproof: Yeah Ive also seen the option to fix sync but it doesnt helped me much. The files you mentioned which were badly ripped, did they work better on the computer than on the dvd player?

Could someone give me a short easy description about VBR, what is it?? I will look into the tutorials soon, but do I have to use programs and stuff to fix the sound (I dont think thats worth the time for me, bette to find a better file in that case).

Thanks for the help so far!

[TBoneit]

Your computer can handle many more variations in the encoding than any Standalone player can.

Standalone players are limited by what the decoder chip can handle.

The codecs in your computer can be updated easily. They have more encoding and decoing options.

What happens is some people try to squeeze every last bit of size out of a encode and those will cause problems with standalones. QPEL, GMC, Packed Bistream, VBR audio.

VBR audio is variable Bit Rate audio. If you do a forum search you will see some who think VBR audio is evil. Same thing with RM (realmedia) especially the VBR RMs.

[Gambero]

Hi, i have dvd player philips 5960.
I have a problem, i can't play divx from external HDD (Maxtor 320 GB)
My HDD is formatted FAT32 with primary partition and external power.
Plugged with the player i see first level of directory and files well, but if i open a directory the sebdirectory names are wrong with strange charecters (es "#-DF!@" or other like this) and files are not visibles.
I try to put a divx in the root of the disk and play but the only thing appened is to hide the menu for few seconds then reapper but video don't start.
I try to put a mp3 in the root of the disk but also the music don't start.
I read about problems to found external drives via USB but this is not my problem! i see the drive and first folders well, only subfolders have wrong names and divx or mp3 don't start!
Someone can help me?
Thanks

[TBoneit]

Did you try using short names? The 5960 likes names such as Welldone.avi

If your files all have long names that start out the same it will changes them to garbage names for display.

[jagabo]

Does you drive have its own power supply? The USB port on the 5960 doesn't supply enough power for most 3 1/2 inch drives.

[pankamo]

Your computer can handle many more variations in the encoding than any Standalone player can.

Standalone players are limited by what the decoder chip can handle.

The codecs in your computer can be updated easily. They have more encoding and decoing options.

What happens is some people try to squeeze every last bit of size out of a encode and those will cause problems with standalones. QPEL, GMC, Packed Bistream, VBR audio.

VBR audio is variable Bit Rate audio. If you do a forum search you will see some who think VBR audio is evil. Same thing with RM (realmedia) especially the VBR RMs.

Ok, now I see.

Thanks for helping me with my questions, you guys are real good at this stuff!

[Gambero]

Did you try using short names? The 5960 likes names such as Welldone.avi

Yes, the problem is not short names because a name like "MyLongName.avi" should be converted in 8.3 format as "MyLong~1.avi" and in fact the files in root of the disk are converted in this format, the problem are the files in subdirectories that have bad names as "#-DF!@"

Does you drive have its own power supply?

Yes, my drive have an external power supply

any suggestion? could be the player defective?

[TBoneit]

I'm guessing that the drive is not completely compatible with the Philips.

[jagabo]

Try a thumb drive if you have one.

[Gambero]

thanks to all!
I solved formatting the drive with SwissKnife!!
Now play all divx mp3 and jpg very well!!
Thanks

[jagabo]

Another SwissKnife success story!

[androgelrx]

I can't seem to play avi files that are over 2 gb thru USB. Is this expected with this player? I may have to look at the OPPO 980 if it can do it thru USB. Any help would be useful.

[Goofproof]

That's awful big 1.5 hours of video is only .750 Gb, how about spliting the file in two. It will play it from the same dir.