I have a 3TB external with tons of BR's on it. Can I watch these on my LCD to save me from blank media cost?
info info info, does your tele have a usb slot? if so can it pick your drive up? does it read ntfs? if it doesnt do the latter and only reads fat32 you out of luck. anyway instead of me typing all this why dont you just plug it in and see for yourself? if your tele is cheap it wont show true bluray anyway. info is needed
Thanks for the help The tv is a Samsung an LN40 model and the drive is a WD Elements I did not make it clear that I will hand blu rays on my drive once I rip them. Right now I just have DVD in .iso format. I hooked the drive up to the tv and it detects then shows media play with all the movie folders. I click on a folder then it says upper folder and nothing else, so I guess I cannot play iso files.
iso files have to be burnt to disc no other way round it if you want to play from hdd, its a disc image from the original source, what you really need to try is dl a simpsons half hour clip stick it on a memory stick formatted to fat32 see if it plays, if it doesnt play format the stick to ntfs and put the simpsons back on. your tv will support one of them, but make sure its avi you download
Can BR be ripped and saved as avi? What is the quality like? I just played some avi movies on the tv but the quality is bad because they are meant for my PSP and really compressed
i was just trying to find out if your tv supports ntfs. ntfs = larger than 4gig files, ie ya bluray on your hdd. if your tv doesnt support ntfs you cant play your bluray
Yes. I've seen quite a few Xvid/AVI Bluray encodes at 1080p or 720p etc. The quality is quite acceptable although generally not as good as when using the x264 encoder. I very much doubt your TV will play ISOs but they can be extracted to the original vob files etc with archiving software. Like you'd extract a zip file. I don't know if the TV will play the vob files though (hopefully it will) as I don't think I've ever tried it. I always convert DVDs to MKV or MP4. My TV plays mpeg2 video so there's some hope. TugZip, Ultimate Zip, WinRAR, ZipGenius. Most, if not all of those programs, should be able to extract the contents of an ISO. My Samsung TV does so if it's a current model it should. I think NTFS support is fairly standard these days.
I based my "guess" on the fact the OP and myself both have Samsung TVs, so if his is a current model he should be safe. A lot has changed in the last year or so. My other half bought a Sony Bluray player a few years ago which doesn't even play video via USB. I think the next model did but only USB fat drives. Now they'll happily talk to a 2TB NTSC drive (I haven't tested anything larger) as will the Samsung Bluray player in this house, the Samsung TV and the Sharp TV. All are a little under a year old. Maybe there's TVs with built in media players or even USB capable Bluray players still being made which only support fat drives, but I think NTSC support is fairly standard now.
yeah it should be. gets on my erves when i cant play a film over 4gig on a tv but yeah my vierra is about 18 month old
My IT buddy at school told me if I do not back my BR's up in .iso format that I would regret it down the road. He also said here are the steps he uses without any flaws. 1. back up fully in .iso container 2. stream your .iso to television He also noted that doing this there will be no menus, extras etc. Just the movie. Could it be this simple and what kind of streaming device is the best on the market for $100 or so? Also, do these streaming devices store the .iso files or will I still need my external HD's?
I have a samsung TV and it can play video files from a hard drive but it has problems. I prefer to use a WD TV live and everything works great.
i actually use a ps3 to stream my movies to my tv.there are a few options for streaming,(xbox 360,ps3,media boxes,smart tvs can stream directly). looking around the forums or doing a search should take you to a thread about media boxes (there have been few of them)some media boxes have hard drives. another option would be connecting a laptop or pc to your tv through hdmi cable and watching them straight off your computer on tv.
Why would you regret it later down the road? The only disadvantage to making an .iso backup is that it takes up a lot of space because it's a 1:1 backup, especially if it's a BR backup. Having no menus or extras depends on if you create an image file of the entire disc or just the main movie. You stated in your original post you had 3TB worth of storage space. If you don't have a pile of movies to backup, just use a free program like MakeMKV and create a backup. Just keep the main movie and the audio you want - uncompressed. Most BR are 18-30GB, so you figure if they're 30GB at the most, you can fit 100 backups on your HDD. If you want the entire disc, then use something like Imgburn and just back up the entire disc. I don't know of any TV sets that can stream .iso files to them - at least I don't own any and my TV is fairly new. For a set top box, I really like the WDTV. It reads directly-connected NTFS drives, so there's no hassle trying to get them all under 4GB to work with FAT32. It plays just about any format one can throw at it. I think they sell for ~$90.
i got one of these for my movies http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sumvision-Cyclone-Nano-Media-Player/dp/B007BW6LX0 it also plays anything you throw at it, reads fat 32 and ntfs is good for the price for a media box and is also android tv
Have you used it for awhile yet? What's your opinion of it? All I have to complain about with the WDTV Live is that it doesn't support DTS-HD or DTS-MA. It does support DTS 5.1 but it defaults it to 2-channel stereo defeating the purpose. Same with AC3 5.1. But I do all my backups with AC3 5.1 because it sounds good enough for me, keeps the file sizes down and I still have the surround sound capability if I want to hook it up to a good stereo. AC3 seems to be a pretty compatible format too.
i use it all the time, i dont need to even worry about what i throw it, it does it all, i actually bought it for the 3d as i have a 3d tv and it works amazing. No complaints here whatsoever. it has all codecs built in for sounds, (tried to get you a list of them but cant find one) its a piece of cake to use and plays fine thru my SHARP 5.1 surround <<<<<<<<<<<edit, also audio plays through my tv no problem at all
Yeah I kinda wish mine had compatibility with DTS-HD and DTS-MA. I hear it's all licensing stuff. But oh well. AC3 5.1 sounds good enough for me and I still have the surround sound capability if I hook it up to a stereo. It plays Dolby TrueHD through a stereo system, but not without it. I haven't tried PCM yet. Probably the same thing.
