DVD players that have USB inputs - looking for info

Hi there -

Technically, this isn't quite computer related but I'm hoping I can find help here or at least somebody can point me in the direction to find the help I need.

I've got a lousy DVD player that is supposed to play from a USB but it seems to only play mp3s.  Are there any DVD players with USB input that can play mp4s?

Thanks,

Beeker

Considering that the death of the CD/DVD has been announced countless times over the last few years there are still a surprising number of CD/DVD players/writers on the market, do a search on Amazon for either 'USB DVD drives' or 'External DVD drives' The results are almost identical.

However, I am not quite clear on what your problem is. If it is the hardware then any of the listed devices should meet your needs. If it is the player software on your computer then I can thoroughly recommend the VLC player from Videolan.org. I have been using this for years and it can play virtually everything.

Chris Cosgrove

Hi, very much so re : VLC player from Videolan.org it will play anything.

Have you looked up the make / model and seen if there is a Support Page for it and if so does it have any drivers.

(my self, have paid for ) : Cyberlink DVD and it will also play just about anything though is a pain with it's settings so is hard to stop it to not index and not start up.  It does a great job of playing though.  EDIT : Context, removed will

(Not used the free stuff) , has a try buy : https://www.cyberlink.com/products/powerdvd-ultra/features_en_CA.html Note is Canada Site, will I suppose change to your country.

But VLC and and there is Media Player Classic and Media Player Black Edition and they are free and play almost anything. I think all 3 are available from the Microsoft Store.

Edited by Pkshadow, 05 June 2024 - 06:49 PM.

You are far more likely to find a TV that will play mp4's from USB sticks or drives, than a DVD player.

Note the .mp4 (or .m4v) extension on a file just indicates the container format.  The video and audio data in MP4 files can be in a number of different codecs, some of which may not be supported by all players.  For example, it's possible to have an MP4 file with the video encoded in AV1 or H.265/HEVC codecs, which are only likely to work on newer devices.  Programs like MediaInfo will give more information about the codecs used for any given media file.

If it's older then it may only be intended to support older video formats like WMV (Windows Media) or MPEG4 Part 2 (variants include DivX and Xvid) which can be in an .mp4 file, but also .avi and others.

Or it could just be that it's only intended for music files as you mention...

Yes you can buy DVD or BluRay players which will read video formats from a USB stick.  This is a Blu-Ray player for example that supports USB connection of sticks and hard drives and should read most common formats - https://www.richersounds.com/panasonic-dmpbdt180.html   There are much cheaper DVD players however, I think it's unlikely they'll support all of the newer formats (the few I looked at claimed to be multi format players, but digging into the specs showed references to "DivX" video only).

Edited by jonuk76, 07 June 2024 - 04:40 AM.

Ya. The above is tricky stuff.  Some can be in almost any format and then the person wants to compress it further and saves in that format.

I have DVD that was obsolete (for me) in months due to the file format changes to MKV.    As well the Codecs changing you mention.

For awhile (can not remember now) all the players even VLC could not play a file with coding that Cyberlink could. 

So ya would skip on the hardware,  IMHO software will do the trick all the things VLC has under the hood is impressive these day.