Hard Drive Video Player

[Rozella Dibley]

WindowsMedia Player doesn't recognize my USB external hard drive as a syncable device. If I plug in any USB flash drive, it shows up as a device, but I can't seem to get it to recognize my external hard drive.

It's double-handling, I know, but it's the only way to get exactly what you want out of WMP. Personally I just wanted my 'Top Rated' songs on the harddrive to listen to while playing Xbox, but I also wanted them to remain in their Artist/Album folders for easy selection. This workaround did that for me.

In the thread Windows Media Player 12 and USB Drives, some people have reported successafter reformatting their external drives in NTFS, others rather with FAT32.I have reproduced the problem with my own large external disk, but have no intention of reformatting it.

Some people have tried to solve this problem by keeping their music only on the external drive, since WMP will happily import music files from it.This introduces more problems when the driveis to be turned off, as treated in this article.

In conclusion: You could try to reformat the drive as NTFS or as FAT32 and it might work or not,or some other weird problems might follow this first success. All in all, I think WMP syncfeature is too full of bugs to be called reliable. I really suggest using some other and less problematic sync product.

I spent about 2 days trying to get media player music transferred to my usb stick to play music in my car. Media Player would not recognise usb as a syncable device. The only way I could find to do this is probably a round-a-bout way but at least it worked. I have Windows 7

What issues may I have by connecting a 10TB hard drive with 7.5 TBs of movies? I read a post that I may have to partition the hard drive into 2TB partitions. Is this correct? Any other issues that I may come across including formatting?

More importantly is if your media is acceptable to a Roku player. The container has to be MKV/MP4/MOV/TS/M2TS. No other container is supported. And the codecs within the container must also be supported. For video that means MPEG2/H.262, AVC/H.264, MP4, and if your Roku is 4K capable HEVC/H.265. For audio, you have a few more supported codecs: AC3/DD, DTS (but only to passthrough from an MKV/TS container to a supporting AVR), AAC (2 channel only which is converted to PCM) or LPCM. There's some additional less common audio codecs as well, plus some additional caveats. See this page for more complete support information.

Unless you're completely certain your media is all supported, you might consider instead using a media server on a computer or NAS, and stream the media across the network. Plex and Emby both offer free servers, and have dedicated channels for Roku devices. There's also DLNA servers like Serviio that can be used with Roku Media Player. That's what I use, and I also wrote the profiles that ship with Serviio for Roku devices.

VLC is a media player, not a transcoding app. Yes, it can publish a video stream, but not really useful for being able to select and play local media. There is no VLC app/channel for Roku devices, and the developers have stated they will never make one, due to differences in the programming languages used.

For a free transcoding app, Handbrake is one of the best there is. But transcoding a large number of unsupported media could take a very long time to complete. It's far easier to install a media server on a computer and let it do the real time transcoding for any unsupported media. Plex and Emby both offer both a server for the computer and a channel for Roku devices. There are also a number of DLNA servers that work with the Roku Media Player channel. I'm partial to Serviio, and I assisted its author by creating the Roku profiles included with the software.

VLC can absolutely do transcoding, I have used it to do that, taking one file coded with less common codecs and creating another file using more common codecs. It isn't quick or easy, though, but it was the tool I had at the time (locked down work machine where I was allowed VLC, but not other tools).

I have a 8TB hard drive hooked up to my Roku Streambar and it does work. I used AOMI too partition it into NTFS and placed mkv and mp4 files on it and it does play aac 5.1 and ac3 audio tracks. so far i havent had any issues

When a hard drive fails in a Terra movie server, Strato player, or Alto player, the customer is notified on the Kaleidescape mobile app, web store, and the onscreen display of the player. An email is also sent to the dealer and customer.

Contact an authorized Kaleidescape dealer for a replacement hard drive or player. Be prepared with the serial number of the Terra, Strato, or Alto. Hard drives and components under warranty will be replaced free of charge.

Movies stored on the failed hard drive of a Strato, Alto, or Terra (compact) will be restored automatically provided there is at least one other Terra, Strato, or Alto online in the system. Restoration begins immediately if the system has enough free space remaining. Note that 4K movies cannot be restored to an Alto.

Systems with a single Strato, Alto, or Terra (compact) that are experiencing a hard drive failure will need to fully replace the affected component. Upon replacement, system activation must be completed anew. Downloaded movies that were stored on the failed component can be optionally restored when activating the replacement.

When a hard drive fails in a Terra movie server, it will continue to operate, but movies stored on the failed drive will be unavailable for playback from connected players.

Affected movies, that were downloaded from the Kaleidescape store, will be restored automatically. Restoration begins immediately if the Terra has enough free space remaining, or if other Terra servers in the system have available space.

A system with a failed hard drive will reserve 2TB of space for new purchases. Restoration will pause once that limit is reached and resume automatically once the failed drive is replaced, or additional storage components are added to the system.

Instructions on how to replace a failed hard drive in a Terra are included in the shipping box containing the replacement hard drive. Instructions can also be found here: -hdd-replacement

Hard drive failures are extremely rare but increase in likelihood with age. Risk of pre-mature hard drive failure increases if the drive experiences excessive shocks from improper handling. Always be gentle when handling components with storage.

A full size Terra movie server will continue to operate after a hard drive failure if at least one functional hard drive remains. Movies stored on the failed drive will be unavailable for playback.

A compact Terra movie server will not operate if its hard drive has failed. Stored movies will be unavailable for playback and the server must be replaced. Any connected players will be unable to connect to the server and will display that a movie server in the system cannot start.

Strato or Alto players will not operate if their hard drive has failed. Stored movies will be unavailable for playback and the player must be replaced. Players will display a message explaining that the player cannot operate due to a hard drive failure.

Strato, Terra (compact), Alto:

Movies stored on the failed hard drive of a Strato, Alto, or Terra (compact) will be restored automatically provided there is at least one other Terra, Strato or Alto online in the system. Restoration begins immediately if the system has enough free space remaining. Note that 4K movies cannot be restored to an Alto.

Terra movie server:

A full size Terra will begin content restoration automatically. Restoration will continue until either all movies and extras are restored, or space restrictions force the process to pause.

This process will restore movies to any Terra movie server in the system with available disk space. If the process is paused, replacing the failed hard drive, adding a storage component, or deleting existing movies and extras, will allow restoration to resume.

Restoration proceeds automatically when there are no recently purchased downloads and downloads are not paused. To adjust the order of movies being restored or select a movie to be restored sooner, visit

Kaleidescape sends a mobile notification (to customer) and an email (to dealer and customer) when the restoration completes. The Kaleidescape app for iOS and Android can also be used to monitor the restoration progress.

No. Kaleidescape movie servers will not recognize a non-Kaleidescape hard drive. The onscreen and browser interface will indicate when an unrecognized hard drive has been installed in a Kaleidescape movie server.

This player can house a single hard drive with up to 8TB capacity to keep things light and compact. You can gain unlimited song capacity expansion through an attached network drive. To expand even further, attach multiple machines to a network drive to setup a client-server network for use in a multi-room or commercial environment.

WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. (California law requires this warning to be given to customers in the State of California.)

Hi,

We need to play HD-videos from a local disk on fly.

Same, as they would be played from youtube, but from a disk in the local network, cause we need the bandwidth that is not supplied from internet provider.

To load all videos to be played into the hype file is not possible cause this would increase the loading time dramatically, before they could be played.

Have a look at my page here which loads the video ( (mp4) locally. ( link on last post )if you can get it to load your videos then let me know and I will show you how when I get a min. Note that the page itself has to be on a server due to security restriction in browsers.

And yes, the files in the right format are no problem to be fed into the player from the network disk. Those files, in other containers are no problem tobe re-muxed.

Take youre time to reply, Im less in a hurry than thankful for youre help.

Best

Wolfgang

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