I want to use one of these to connect to a TV to watch movies. Has anyone tried this? If so, is one USB port on the TV sufficient to run the drive?
1032311
I did not try this but I doubt that it could work. The USBs are: USB3 with blue for data and the other one, USB2 only for power. You can use another power source instead and the you will use only the USB3 for data.
1264142
That's one of the big flaws in that drive -- after a while the USB connector in the unit itself starts to fail. for the short term, you may be able to jiggle the cord to get some connection, but in the long run it is going to become unusable.
1827255
not sure why you would want to use with a TV. This is an empty case holder for a user provided 2.5" hard drive. If you loaded it with an appropriate Hard Drive it would connect to a PS3 but the PS3 ports for USB are only USB2 not USB3. It would still work but not as fast as USB3.
183672
I have had it hooked up to the optical output of a macmini or an appletv and it worked just fine. Never tried the USB connection.
1772544
To be very honest with you I do not think the mini-usb port in back of the projector is for an external hard drive. I have several HD'S and none of them have a mini-usb-cable. ON page 9 of the owner's manual all it shows is the mini-usb cable to a lap-top. The usb button on the remote is non-working. A better bet would be to hook your external hard drive to a BD player w/a usb port or get a Western Digital media Center and you could connect your HD to the Media Center, either way your movies will be going through the HDMI cable which should give you a better picture than a straight usb cable to the projector. To be very honest with you I do not think the mini-usb port in back of the projector is for an external hard drive. I have several HD'S and none of them have a mini-usb-cable. ON page 9 of the owner's manual all it shows is the mini-usb cable to a lap-top. The usb button on the remote is non-working. A better bet would be to hook your external hard drive to a BD player w/a usb port or get a Western Digital media Center and you could connect your HD to the Media Center, either way your movies will be going through the HDMI cable which should give you a better picture than a straight usb... » Read More To be very honest with you I do not think the mini-usb port in back of the projector is for an external hard drive. I have several HD'S and none of them have a mini-usb-cable. ON page 9 of the owner's manual all it shows is the mini-usb cable to a lap-top. The usb button on the remote is non-working. A better bet would be to hook your external hard drive to a BD player w/a usb port or get a Western Digital media Center and you could connect your HD to the Media Center, either way your movies will be going through the HDMI cable which should give you a better picture than a straight usb cable to the projector. « Show Less
2047839
My subjective experience says yes. I gave the WD TV a try to compare it to the multiple WD TV Lives my family has solely for the purpose of playing content from directly attached USB drives. My experience thus far has been completely hassle free which is a vast improvement over the WD TV Live. I was worried when I attached the second USB drive to the WD TV and it didn't appear to be scanning for the content on the drive; I went to Videos just to see what was there and the content was already displayed (note that this drive had already been connected to a WD TV Live previously but it seemed to simply 'work' when I plugged it into the WD TV). My subjective experience says yes. I gave the WD TV a try to compare it to the multiple WD TV Lives my family has solely for the purpose of playing content from directly attached USB drives. My experience thus far has been completely hassle free which is a vast improvement over the WD TV Live. I was worried when I attached the second USB drive to the WD TV and it didn't appear to be scanning for the content on the drive; I went to Videos just to see what was there and the content was already displayed (note that this drive had already been connected to a WD TV Live previously but it seemed... » Read More My subjective experience says yes. I gave the WD TV a try to compare it to the multiple WD TV Lives my family has solely for the purpose of playing content from directly attached USB drives. My experience thus far has been completely hassle free which is a vast improvement over the WD TV Live. I was worried when I attached the second USB drive to the WD TV and it didn't appear to be scanning for the content on the drive; I went to Videos just to see what was there and the content was already displayed (note that this drive had already been connected to a WD TV Live previously but it seemed to simply 'work' when I plugged it into the WD TV). « Show Less
1302909
Hi. You need to download a short authorization video from DIVX on to the USB drive then view and play it on the tv. Then it will work with DIVX videos and Photos will show up and you can view those as well. So you might want to get the free divx player/convert on your PC to use for loading your USB drive for HDTV use. I am pretty sure when your TV would not let you use your USB it told you a website to go to. Write it down and follow directions. Let me know if you need more help. vegaschris22@aol.com
1807085
I tried to play a USB with mine. I used a 8gb flash drive and tried to play a 1.6gb mp4 file and a 756mb mp4 file. Each time it said the file type was unsupported.
2048374
As a external HDD? You could with an enclosure. That is if your tv supports storage on an external drive via USB. Does your tv have an internal HDD?
1414006
Has anyone returned this and then purchased a BETTER drive that is fully functional in playing DVDs? Would appreciate advice.
1085747
The usb slot is only for connecting usb flash drives to the unit. If the USB flash drive has media that can be read; i.e., a standard dvd structure, mpeg4s, mp3s, cds, or jpegs then the unit will play the media. Here is a link to the user's manual for more information: http://s3.amazonaws.com/szmanuals/11333ba7d45d5f0d5256a1e945fa457b
820156
There are devices available, that will help you to do it - USB Portable Media Players. It connects to the TV and you just need to plug in the portable drive into it to be able to watch the movies on TV.I personally have an Iomega screenplay media drive that is an external hard drive with capability to plug into tv to watch the movies.
2177230
Short answer, I don't know. I have two 4TB HD's. I'm actually using an O!play player now which has only one USB input. I'm forced to switch input cables whenever I change from one drive to another. Pain in the a##. I never thought of using a port (duhh). My advice to both of us would be to buy any powered port. Save your receipt. If it works, great. If it doesn't, return it.
1085505
I have only used the tv function but it has a port that you can play music and videos off of a flash drive. Truthfully I don't know the answer to that question. You may want to look into your user pamphlet to see if there is a customer assistance number to call for your best answer.
2140170
I've had mine now for about two years and have a 3TB Seagate External hard drive attached to it via the USB port. The 3TB model has an external power connection. Thus, it is not powered by the USB port. Having said that, I use mine for watching my movie collection that I have converted from VHS and DVD to mp4. I have had no issues accessing the drive nor using the Sony remote to scroll through files and find the content I want. A nice upgrade would be if the USB port were a USB 3.0 versus a USB 2.0, but as-is, it works fine for me.
999716
If this device will not provide high quality images from my laptop to my older (but wide screen) TV, what device would you recommend? I would like to play movies and stream video from my laptop through my TV. Thanks!!!
2045929
Yes, that will work. The 2nd USB connector is just for power. That's because some older USB ports will detect a power overload if the drive tries to pull all its power from a single port. To workaround that they the Y cable can be used to pull power from 2 ports. Non-anceint USB ports, like 2.0 or 3.0 or from a powered hub will probably work fine if you just plug in the one end of the cable. Try it with just one. If it works, you're good. If it doesn't, the computer will tell you "power overload detected" and the drive won't work, but no damage will be done.