Hooking up my external to my dvd player
 

Hi everyone, I recently tried to hook up my external hard drive to my dvd player through the usb port. I wasn't able to load any of the video files from my hard drive. I assumed that the usb port would be for things like external hard drives or usb keys but it appears that I was wrong, or i'm doing something wrong.

It isn't a codec issue, because my dvd player does play my video files after i burn them onto cds/dvds. When I plug in the external, it recognizes that something is attached, but none of my files show, and i'm not sure why.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

The USB port on your DVD player, is more or less, strictly to make a connection between your computer and the DVD so it can output to your machine, no way to transfer, sorry :(

Make sure all your files are in DivX format (commonly, it's the .avi extension), otherwise it won't read them. Also, some DVD players have trouble reading large volumes of data, so keep it simple. If you have an MP3 player, copy some movies onto it and see if that will work. I've used my iPod to watch .avi movies from my PC through my DVD player via USB.

I'll give this a try with a usb key. If that doesn't work, i'll try my sister's ipod nano. If I use the nano, do i need to take out all the music files? Or seperate the music from the video?

Are your video files in folders? I have seen devices that behave like crying little school girls because I have my media in a folder hierarchy.

yes, i have everything in folders unfortunately.

however, i've burned cds with folders and it goes through each folder fine.

Ok, I stuck a file onto my usb key and success! It played!

Now I need to buy a usb key that has a lot more memory :D.

Now i'm actually really curious as to why my external didn't work. Maybe it's because everything is in folders. I'll try it again with some things outside of the folders.

what model DVD player is this?

samsung httx75. your basic home theatre in a box type dvd player.

The one with floor standing speakers? If so, it's the same exact one I have. I find that this DVD player is worse at reading USB material than my previous Philips 2.1 home theater. Folders don't matter as it will read the files in folders. My main gripe with the Samsung interface is that you can't folder surf while the music is playing. Philips allows you to do that. I haven't tried connecting an external hard drive to it, but I know that many, if not all DVD players will have trouble reading hard drives with over 40 or so GB of storage capacity. It read my 20GB iPod fine. You can leave the music intact as it has different pages in the menu for video and audio.

my dvd player with a usb drive will not read files that are in a folder also.
i guess many dvd players are made like that. my dvd player is a phillips.

Strange, I thought all DVD players read folders. I've owned three and they all did (two Philips and one Samsung).