Can i play my movies directly from an external HD?

[slipper]

I was just at the local Best Buy checking out the Sony Internet TV's. The one concern i had which isn't answered on the Sony website is: Am i able to connect my external HD and play my movies directly from the Sony Internet TV? The Best Buy sales person told me yes when i asked but she didn't seem to know very much else about the unit. Was she just blowing smoke up my behind?

 

[majortom1981]

I have the sony blu-ray unit. They have an app for playing things off of usb hdd. I havent tried that yet but i will tyr it later tonight and post how it went.

Keep in mind when the android store opens up you will prob be able to buy better media playing software.

 

[slipper]

I have the sony blu-ray unit. They have an app for playing things off of usb hdd. I havent tried that yet but i will tyr it later tonight and post how it went.

Thanks. Could you also comment on the file formats supported?

Keep in mind when the android store opens up you will prob be able to buy better media playing software.

Good point.

 

[simplygoogletv]

The Logitech Revue can, but is limited to 40GB or less storage devices. I haven't heard anything specific about the Sony NSZ-GT1, I would hope it does at least the same.

 

[GTV]

I'm using the Sony Blu-ray box (NSZ-GT1)

I have not tried it with a USB disk but I have used the built in Media Player applications reading the media server area on my HP Windows Home Server. The Sony box is able to find and play .mp4, .m4v and .mkv files in the 2GB to 11GB size range. The Media Server app would not play .avi files. I do get occasional network dropout using Wireless N at 78mbit ("Fair" signal strength) so I'll be running a hard wired Ethernet cable to it soon when I get a chance.

My only issue so far is a strange green vertical line (~= 10 pixels) on edge of the RHS of the TV's screen. It is annoying but not a deal breaker. Trying the setup's screen re-sizing multiple times did not make the green line go away.

 

[Lock-N-Load]

The Logitech Revue can, but is limited to 40GB or less storage devices. I haven't heard anything specific about the Sony NSZ-GT1, I would hope it does at least the same.

the 40gb limit is NOT true. The Revue actually supports USB drives upto 895GB in size, but is limited to FAT, FAT16, and FAT32 Filesystems because of a limitation in the Android Platform. See the following FAQ Regarding the USB Drive

 

[jrmuller]

States there still working to update, but right now I can only get .avi files to work, .mp4 don't even show.. but supposedly coming soon..

 

[l3reak]

Keep in mind that the file extension doesn't really matter too much, i.e. whether it's .mp4, .avi, .mkv, etc. That's just what's called the "container" format, and that container could still have any number of different types of video, such as divx, h.264, etc. So if the Revue can only play h.264 video, but not divx, it might be able to play some .avi files that have divx inside, but not play other .avi files that have h.264 inside. Depending on what type of video is inside a given .avi or .mkv, one user might find that his .avi files play but not his .mkv's, and another user finds that his .mkv files play but not his .avi's.

 

[krazykrivda]

I have the google TV 40" and I'm trying to wireless stream video from PC (using TVersity) to the TV and having no luck. All of my library is avi format. Anyone in a similar circumstance that has a positive outcome.

 

[Chahk]

I have a Synology Disk Station DS409+ NAS box with latest firmware (DSM 3.0), and my Sony Blu-Ray player (NSZ-GT1) plays everything I have on it. Mostly those are MPGs and Divx/XviD AVIs, but I also have a bunch of MP4s and AVCHDs shot with my Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX5 camera.

 

[Pokewithstick]

For the Sony TV, how do you view the USB drive?
I plugged in a 500g USB drive and a 1g flash drive but I can not see where to access them. The Media Player app just wants to connect to my home server and the the "Add Devices" in the menu doesn't find drives and I can't manually add them.
Has anyone been able to do this on the Sony Internet TV?

Thx

 

[ceeya]

i have gotten the sony to see an 8 gig flash drive but wouldnt work with an external harddrive. To access the flash drive go to Media player and click on the usb icon...Joe

 

[OutlawFirebird]

what about a hard drive connected to you network? like ones that hooked up to your router. and by the way how do I connect the revue to a computer?, or can I?

 

[Lock-N-Load]

For the Sony TV, how do you view the USB drive?
I plugged in a 500g USB drive and a 1g flash drive but I can not see where to access them. The Media Player app just wants to connect to my home server and the the "Add Devices" in the menu doesn't find drives and I can't manually add them.
Has anyone been able to do this on the Sony Internet TV?

Thx

i have gotten the sony to see an 8 gig flash drive but wouldnt work with an external harddrive. To access the flash drive go to Media player and click on the usb icon...Joe

did you guys see my link above, it might have to do with formatting the drive to 1 of the usable formats they list?

 

[kquade]

I have the Google Tv box from Sony. I have plugged up my 8GB Sandisk flash drive and it's worked fine. I've plugged up several 320GB WD Passports and they have worked fine.

My only issue is with my WD 1TB My Book World Edition II (network drive) plugged into my router. The Media Player sees it, and can access it, but it says that there is nothing on it. Both my PC and Laptop can read/write the files on it just fine.

Everything is hard wired.

 

[PastorOfMuppets]

I have the Google Tv box from Sony. I have plugged up my 8GB Sandisk flash drive and it's worked fine. I've plugged up several 320GB WD Passports and they have worked fine.

My only issue is with my WD 1TB My Book World Edition II (network drive) plugged into my router. The Media Player sees it, and can access it, but it says that there is nothing on it. Both my PC and Laptop can read/write the files on it just fine.

Everything is hard wired.

Is that drive formatted in NTFS? If so it may need to be FAT as stated above. I haven't looked into it much yet but your thumb drive and passports maybe Fat32.

 

[mfruckus]

Are any of you that are using a Sony google tv device having problems with it playing computer movie files (mp4) at the wrong aspect ratio? Mine plays 16:9 intended files at 4:3. Messed with all settings and still not playing properly. DVDs and Blurays play fine. Files play fine on the computer.

http://androidforums.com/google-tv/207508-sony-nsz-gt1-plays-movie-files-wrong-aspect-ratio.html

 

[PastorOfMuppets]

I haven't tried mp4 yet but so far divx/xvid has worked well. Not sure I have any mp4 files but I will sheck it out.

 

[rad_thundercat]

Yes, you can connect an external drive, but it's not very practical.

The drive needs to be formatted with a FAT or FAT32 file system (no NTSF!).

Unfortunately, those file systems don't work well with large files. I think with FAT32, no file can be over 4GB. Any HD movie with a decent compression is going to run you at LEAST that.

So far I've learned that the Google TV is not for movies (from a local library anyway). You can stream movies from a server, but I've had very little luck with it recognizing my movies (ie, it doesn't find any .mkv files, and only picks up crap .avi SD movies).

I hope that some 'local movie app' or similar will come out in the future to fix this. The stock Logitech app blows.

 

[Chahk]

So far I've learned that the Google TV is not for movies (from a local library anyway). You can stream movies from a server, but I've had very little luck with it recognizing my movies (ie, it doesn't find any .mkv files, and only picks up crap .avi SD movies).

I'm using the Sony's Blu-Ray NSZ-GT1 player and that can play .mkv files from my NAS server over DLNA perfectly. 720p is the highest resolution I've tried, mostly because my TV can only do up to 1080i.

I hope that some 'local movie app' or similar will come out in the future to fix this. The stock Logitech app blows.

We'll have to wait until "early 2011" for the Android Market to come to the Google TV, which will bring many options for media playback. Btw, the "Media Player" app is from Google, not Logitech.

 

[StrifeJester]

I second the waiting for the Market update. Does anyone here remember what the original Droids were like. The market place sucked when it launched. We have to remember as early adopters this is expected you cannot roll out a product and expect everything to be there. The nice thing is the community will provide what people need over time. Within 6 months GoogleTV will be much better than today and that trend will continue just as it has on the phones.

 

[smal26]

I was just at the local Best Buy checking out the Sony Internet TV's. The one concern i had which isn't answered on the Sony website is: Am i able to connect my external HD and play my movies directly from the Sony Internet TV? The Best Buy sales person told me yes when i asked but she didn't seem to know very much else about the unit. Was she just blowing smoke up my behind?

i have gotten it to work with Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB. However if i connect more than one drive. it does not see one of the drives. for example i have Western Digital My Passport Essential 1 TB and the Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB. both connect at the same time and only the 2TB showed up. after turning it off and restarting the google TV BD device, the 1TB drives shows up under the media player. so i am not sure it supports more than one device. however i did see the full 2tb capacity and the 1tb capacity whenever it recognized one of the drives. if anyone has gotten this to work successfully with the new update of ogm_2.1_2010121503ON from sony. please let me know. thanks

 

[astrolab]

For the Sony TV, how do you view the USB drive?
I plugged in a 500g USB drive and a 1g flash drive but I can not see where to access them. The Media Player app just wants to connect to my home server and the the "Add Devices" in the menu doesn't find drives and I can't manually add them.
Has anyone been able to do this on the Sony Internet TV?

Thx

I was able to access my 500GB hitachi external harddrive (FAT32 formatted)from my Sony google tv through the "photos" app in the menu. Go down to 'local media" (the fourth tab, most likely) and you should be able to access your files from there.

Best of luck!
Cheers

 

[Doulos24x7]

i have gotten it to work with Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB. However if i connect more than one drive. it does not see one of the drives. for example i have Western Digital My Passport Essential 1 TB and the Western Digital My Book Essential 2 TB. both connect at the same time and only the 2TB showed up. after turning it off and restarting the google TV BD device, the 1TB drives shows up under the media player. so i am not sure it supports more than one device. however i did see the full 2tb capacity and the 1tb capacity whenever it recognized one of the drives. if anyone has gotten this to work successfully with the new update of ogm_2.1_2010121503ON from sony. please let me know. thanks

I have a 1tb WD Passport, trying to connect it to the Sony Google TV BD device. Can't get it to work.

I have formatted it as FAT32...didn't work. Same with exFAT. The Sony detects the drive and will sometimes show it as a ".91tb" device...but I try to connect the Media Player to it and it does not show up.

Then I'll go back into settings, storage and it shows the drive with the correct drive label, but as a 255mb device.

This is jacked.