Playing films from a 1TB WD harddrive on a tv

OXFORD_SMOGGY

Hi, I am looking at buying a new tv for around £200 which has a built in DVD player, min 22 inch max 32 inch, is full HD and is capable of playing AVI film files from a USB conection from a Western Digital 1TB harddrive.

Does anyone have any experience of getting films to play on a tv from USB and can recommend a tv to do so? What makes/spec of tv can do this as have read many conflicting reviews.

I was looking at buying this tv but am unsure whether it can play AVI files from a harddrive http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/tvs/logik-l24dvdb21-review-50003885/

Cheers

Lucero_2

My first question, how will you power this drive? If it has its own power supply it may well work. It certainly works with normal USB thumb drives. Alternatively, look for a TV that supports DLNA, then, plug your 1TB drive in to your PC and simply share the folder.

Your TVs DLNA (ideally wired to the router) will see the share and allow you to watch all the movies that way

OXFORD_SMOGGY

Thanks, it has its own power supply. I have read some conflicting info about the capacity that different tvs can handle, some wont read more than 250gb. How can I definitely tell that a TV will definitly play an AVI file? My current TV has a usb slot but doesnt recognise the hard-drive when it is plugged in. Id rather we didnt have to connect the hard-drive to the pc and then tv as this sort of defeats the object.

closed

The only way of finding out is to look at the specs of the tv, there are plenty of media players from around £20 which tend to play a wider variety of file types, as well as pvr's, dvd players etc -- but check for digital rights management limitations

http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Visual/cat/Media-Players-and-Wireless-streaming/subcat/Media-Players

existing tv, could be a problem with filesystem possibly, eg ntfs or fat32

A portable drive would be quieter, inobtrusive, and wouldn't need a seperate psu.

Faysy

This post could really help me too as I am also looking for a suitable TV to play AVI files. I have an LG 42" TV with three USB ports in my living room but they can only be used for music and pictures. I have tried attaching my hard drive but it doesnt recognise movie files. I have tried using smaller USB devices but it still doesnt work so does it have to be TV specific? It doesnt seem to be wildly publicised of which TV's support USB/AVI files as I dont want a second TV that doesnt play AVI files via the USB ports.

I similarly would like a under 32" tv with DVD combi that can support USB devices. Any suggestions?

Thank you in advance

Anthonis

There are a couple of disappointments, though. The EPG isn't the best, as it only shows two programmes per channel at one time, so you have to do a fair amount of scrolling around to check what's coming up of an evening. Also, the USB media player and DVD player don't support playback of Xvid and DivX files -- something that's reasonably common on small TVs such as this.

Well tv has to be able play divx, xvid files... Now about external hard drive: as far as I know hdd has to have only 1 partition and format which is supported by tv. Now power from USB is about 0.5A which is usually enough to feed up small external hdd without power source. Now for bigger ones there are caddy's which have 2x USB at one end and that makes 1A which is enough to spin bigger drives. I don't know but most manufacturers now raise USB power to 1A per one socket...
Now you should check before buy at manufacturers website what formats tv supports.

OXFORD_SMOGGY

Bought an Bush 24inch from Argos today, guess what the DVD broke the second time we used it so it is going back. The external hard drive was to big to recogise in the tv however we put a couple of films on a USB stick and they played fine in terms of picture quality however with no sound!!! Grrrr. They are all AVI files, the TV supports AVI movie files according to the manual with audio of WMA or AAC, how can I cange my AVI file to be one of these audios so that audio will play on the tv or how can I see what audio the AVI file includes?

We are going to have a go with the logik in the link above however according to its manual http://documents.knowhow.com/TV-Home.../L24DVDB21.pdf it only plays MPEG1/2 with audio of MP3. Is there a free software I can use to convert AVI files to MPEG files?

Idiophreak

Personally, I'd just buy a £20 media player from ebuyer etc and then choose whatever TV I want. Probably end up cheaper and more flexible going forward.

OXFORD_SMOGGY

Will the media player make the TV play the AVI files in sound even when the TV alone wouldnt?

Kingsd316

Not sure if you can get it in your price range but my Sony EX403 plays AVI files straight off my Western Digital HD, so does my sony NX703, so maybe look for a low end sony bravia with a USB connection

neilwoods

Honestly a tv for £200 that does DVD and play all formats from Desktop drive, you will struggle to find one, especially if you want to play full HD films, as that bush tv with dvd combi is only 800:1 contrast (i know some people will say it doesn't matter about contrast, but you will notice the difference on dark scenes)

As have others have said, get a small media player interface, will support a lot more files and your WD hard drive.

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?sort=pricelow&q=media%2Bplayer&limit=10&page=1