Portable Hard Drive plus media player query

gillbill5

Help! Is there such a thing as a portable hard drive with built in media player OR portable media player with say 1TB storage? Which is better? Portable being very important as its for bringing travelling. I'd like it to be all in one, again for travelling purposes. I want it to store regular files and to play movies. It should easy to hook up to any tv/laptop and play as many video file types as possible (as I understand that this can be a problem). I'm on a budget too so max €150 (ideally less!) as it would be crap if it were more expensive and got lost of damaged on my travels. I'm not too hot on this type of stuff so any recommendations/places to buy would be great!! I've used pixmania before but cant seem to find what i'm looking for this time.
Cheers!!

The_Thing

A bit more than your stated budget, but might be what you're looking for: http://www.dabs.ie/products/western-digital-wd-tv--live-hub--1tb-77H8.html

JDxtra

If you are connecting it to a laptop / PC for playback then all you need is a portable hard drive to store your media. You can run a portable version of VLC media player, which should handle all media formats.

I have the above WD TV Live Hub. It's excellent when connecting to a TV, if a little pricey.

tommycahir

Again a little pricey but 2 of my friends have bought the ASUS O'Play HD2 recently and is a great little machine for basic media player functions. Link

It works as an FTP server, Samba server (windows fileshare) and media player modes but the downside is that it can only work in one of those modes at a time.

JDxtra

That will be heavier than the WD TV (as it uses a 3.5" drive) plus no drive is inluded (a 1Tb drive is in the WD TV).

D'Agger

I purchased this roughly 3months ago and love it - cost around €170 in Soundstore then so should be relatively cheaper now.





You can connect it to your tv using HDMI or Scart and from the USB slots at the back you can connect a few additional hard drives if you need.

You can also connect it to your router, put it on your network and share files to it from your PC which saves you having to connect it via USB to put files on it etc.

Duggy747

PaulieC wrote: »

I purchased this roughly 3months ago and love it - cost around €170 in Soundstore then so should be relatively cheaper now.





You can connect it to your tv using HDMI or Scart and from the USB slots at the back you can connect a few additional hard drives if you need.

You can also connect it to your router, put it on your network and share files to it from your PC which saves you having to connect it via USB to put files on it etc.

One thing I've always wondered about these media players is the file formats. You ever have problems with certain files not being able to play because of their format?

00sully

I ordered this yesterday as my 3rd xbox bit the dust

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Live-Media-Player/dp/B002LZUHMI/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1295282049&sr=1-1

apparently its excellent on reading the reviews. The asus posted above does look class since it has USB 3 and possible Nas storage!

the WD live gets pretty good reviews and seems to handle all popular file formats

D'Agger

Duggy747 wrote: »

One thing I've always wondered about these media players is the file formats. You ever have problems with certain files not being able to play because of their format?

No - there's a cheaper version of this Iomega but it didn't play certain file types such as MKV so I spent the extra few quid on this one.

It's played any file type I've put on it so far - blu ray, .avi, .mkv etc. so would highly recommend it

gillbill5

Wowww thanks for all the responses guys. Only my 2nd post and amazed with the response! JDXtra ur probably right in that maybe a harddrive for storage only is a better option for me for popping in my rucksack. I had imagined getting something around 2.5" and the media players suggested are small but just not small enough. I'm looking to get a tiny netbook to bring along mainly for WiFi and keeping in touch so I suppose those 2 can be my travel buddies. Both expenses I hadnt factored in at the start! Yikes!!:)

D'Agger

gillbill5 wrote: »

Wowww thanks for all the responses guys. Only my 2nd post and amazed with the response! JDXtra ur probably right in that maybe a harddrive for storage only is a better option for me for popping in my rucksack. I had imagined getting something around 2.5" and the media players suggested are small but just not small enough.

If you're looking for a small HDD then Tesco have Iomega 500GB hard drives on sale for €70 (roughly) spotted them the last day and they're quite small - not a TB but still might suit your needs.

Plus it's powered by USB so you won't have to worry about having a power source for it when travelling

hearny

I was looking at this earlier
http://www.komplett.ie/Komplett/product/ZKB_03ELEC/11_MEDIAPL/01_MEDIAPL/productdetails/80001478/AC_Ryan_Playon!HD_Essential_1TB/ACR_PV73500_1TB/default.aspx

the spec can be seen here
http://www.playonhd.com/en/?upn=products&subpage=playonhdessential&info=specs

it covers lots of file formats and fits your budget.