# Playing movies from Seagate 1TB External Hard Drive



## goshawke (Jan 13, 2011)

Hi,

I realize this may not be possible at all, but I thought I'd give it a shot. 

I just got a 1TB Seagate "GoFlex" External Hard Drive, because I have a lot of video files and I was running out of space on my MacBook. I thought it'd be great to play these shows on my Home Theatre system straight from the external drive - it's a USB drive, and the DVD player has a USB port. My Home Theatre is Samsung, I'm not sure of much more than that but I can probably find out if I need, and the files I want to play are in iTunes format, or .m4v, if that makes a difference.

I've done some looking, and it seems like I may have to reformat the external to FAT32, but there also seems to be some concern about whether that's even possible for large drive sizes. So is this even an option, or am I stuck with hooking up my external to my computer to my HDMI and having no laptop when I want to watch anything?

Thanks. =)


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## antimoth (Aug 8, 2009)

goshawke said:


> I thought it'd be great to play these shows on my Home Theatre system straight from the external drive - it's a USB drive, and the DVD player has a USB port.


Just connect it and see what happens. Wouldn't bother reformatting to FAT as that may affect your other usage. I have an LG DVD player and its USB port can read a hard drive that was formatted in NFTS, but all it recognizes in the folders are JPG files. The AVI and MOV files on it don't show. Too bad.

On the other hand, with its Wifi access to shared folders on my home network, there are a bundle of video formats the LG can play. Maybe your DVD unit can do it that way.


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## Shamus14 (Jan 8, 2011)

Have a similar problem. Samsung do not like m4v files, they need to be mkv or mpeg etc.

I have recently posted to ask if anyone could help me with re-format of m4v files with no response. Maybe I've asked a stupid question, wish someone would tell me if so?


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

Others know more than I, but I know some of these DVD players only read FAT drives, and FAT is limited to 4GB files sizes. which means some video files will be too large.


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## goshawke (Jan 13, 2011)

Hey,

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I've tried just plugging it in. The DVD player just flashed "READ" at me and couldn't do anything at all with it. I assumed it was something to do with either missing software, improper drive format, or unrecognized file type. As for the utility of FAT, the only thing I'm really going to be using this storage device for is my video files, because they're so space-intensive.

I can't be the only person who's thought of playing videos off their external. Sure someone's come up with a way to do this? Connecting wirelessly is a suggestion, but IIRC it requires me to buy another component for the Home Theatre system to accept wireless input. I'm hoping to do this without buying still more stuff. 

Any other ideas?


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## wazzaau (Jan 20, 2011)

Hi.

I wanted to do the same thing with tv and movie files so what I did was format my external H/D to FAT32 using EASEUS Partition master (I tried to do this with Window 7 but was not possible with a large H/D so had to find a separate program)my drive is 160GB.

I copy files from my PC to the external H/D using the below software and then connect the H/D to my home theatre system.

I use OJO Soft total video converter to convert vob files to AVI which playback on my home theatre system. The AVI profile is " Mpeg4-1500 kbps audio mp3-192 kbps"
This software is a trial version but you may be able to overcome this with some "searching"

I make my video files single files so it is easier to convert just 1 file. 

It works for me though it took some trial and error to get there

Hope this helps


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## lordsmurf (Apr 23, 2009)

Most USB ports only read MP3 and images -- it's hard coded to the firmware.
Very few can play AVI (Divx/Xvid) files, like Philips DVD players.
Almost none do MPEG or ISO files, or other exotic formats (MKV, non-Divx/Xvid AVI, etc)

You'd be better off buying a WDTV: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B003O85A96
I use one of these $75 players -- and my only regret is that I waited so long.
I also wasted tons of time hacking an XBOX, fiddling with finicky DVD players, etc.
This is is an idiot-proff box. Plug it to the TV, plug in a hard drive, sit back and watch videos.
It plays a huge list of formats and file types.
So easy.


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