using usb portable hard drive with usb equipped blu-ray player

[dave63]

I recently bought a Sony BDP S760 bluray player and quite apart from the experience of watching films in HD I've been blown away by how well it displays jpeg digital pictures. I'm thinking that since my player is happy to display such files off a DVD (albeit a bit slow) or a usb memory stick, it ought to be able to work with a usb portable hard drive as well. Has anybody tried this with their S760, any issues?

Thanks

 

[hammill]

dave63:

I recently bought a Sony BDP S760 bluray player and quite apart from the experience of watching films in HD I've been blown away by how well it displays jpeg digital pictures. I'm thinking that since my player is happy to display such files off a DVD (albeit a bit slow) or a usb memory stick, it ought to be able to work with a usb portable hard drive as well. Has anybody tried this with their S760, any issues?

Thanks

It might not work. Check the 760 docs, you may find that it only supports the FAT32 file system, wheras you would probably have a USB portable hard drive configured to use NTFS

 

[Andy Grange]

Good point, but there's software out there to format a hard drive as FAT32. You'll find that quite a few external HDD are still formatted in this way; certainly the last one I bought was (WD Mybook 1Tb).

 

[John Duncan]

Yep shouldn't be a problem at all, provided you start with a blank hard drive and format it FAT32 (which is what I need to do anyway to ensure it can be used between Mac and PC). You can do it by just plugging the HDD into your PC, right clicking and 'format drive'. Strong emphasis on the 'blank hard drive' bit, since you'll delete anything that's on it unless you use software like PartitionMagic.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Some players of this kind can only support memory devices up to a certain capacity, and often don't have enough power on the USB to power a hard drive. At best you may find you have to use a drive with its own power supply (ie a mains adapter); at worst, it simply won't work.

 

[dave63]

Oh well, it was just an idea, the FAT32/NTFS point should have occurred to me.

Thanks to all for your advice

 

[Oldboy]

My bdps760 won't display my 320gb external atall and that is formatted in Fat32.....i've not tried a memory stick however so this may work but an external hdd will not work, i presume Andrew's point about the size of the hdd is the cause but it is slightly disappointing.

I should add that my external makes a very loud buzzing sound when connected to the s760 but i've no idea what that is all about but the drive is unaffected.

 

[Tom Moreno]

Oldboy:
My bdps760 won't display my 320gb external atall and that is formatted in Fat32.....i've not tried a memory stick however so this may work but an external hdd will not work, i presume Andrew's point about the size of the hdd is the cause but it is slightly disappointing.

I should add that my external makes a very loud buzzing sound when connected to the s760 but i've no idea what that is all about but the drive is unaffected.

Just a guess, but probably (as Andrew alluded to) it's not getting sufficient power through the USB and isn't spinning up correctly. Funny noise and non-appearance of drives that use bus power tend to point to that.

 

[Oldboy]

Tom,

That sounds right to me as the drive is not recognised on the menu of the 760, the drive lights up as normal but simply won't function. It does sound exactly like it isn't spinning up correctly as you pointed to, not a deal breaker for me as i have the PS3 for that function but i could see how it may annoy some.