[Mr Forgetful]

Hi,

Could anyone confirm if the S370 plays MKV files over 4.5GB in size via the USB slot from a USB Hard Drive or USB Stick in NTFS format??

Cheers,

David.

[Mr Forgetful]

Ok,

I visited a Sony Centre today and plugged in my pre NTFS formated USB external Hard Drive into a BDP S373 and it does NOT appear to support/recognise this.
I'm guessing it only supports FAT32 formated memory

[trayd]

Yes, I just bought this player and was sad to find that it will only play from FAT32 usb drives....thus no files over 4.5GB, which is a bummer.

It will play my data DVD with 6GB mkv files fine.

Also, sidenote, also tried the LG BD550 and this will not play ANY video via USB. Online it says it will, but the manual and the actual menu of the DVD player indicate it only supports pictures & music via USB.

[SeeleyBooth]

this maye be no use to you but the samsung C5500 will play files over 4.5gb Fine

[stvnshrmptn]

Is this still the case, or have any updates improve dthe MKV support?

[raybarclay]

Hi,

Just to confirm that USB support is still FAT only. Personally, I don't expect it will change but remain hopeful. That is not the only USB related issue, as it doesn't support my iPod Classic despite the big logo on the box and what it says in the manual. Sony hasn't replied to my email about these and some mkv issues (see below), sent 3 weeks ago.

If you have a modern laptop then you can connect HDMI to TV and spdif/optical to the home cinema. Alternatively, you could stream from a NAS box or PC acting as a server. You should check other threads about this. As others have implied, a DL DVD of a supported mkv file will get you up to 8.5Gb, assuming your computer DVD drive will burn DL.

Bear in mind that, oddly, the Sony does not see mkv files on the network (not sure about other formats as only set this up last night). It only sees mkv from the USB or DVD, but renaming the network mkv files to avi seems to work in most cases. Also, I found for all three of DVD, USB or network, that not all things wrapped in MKV are the same, so keep within what is supported. I have a few that say "audio not supported" but play anyway. For others, I get a black screen (so potentially a wasted DL disk), presumably because the video codec is not supported so the Sony hangs up, needing a restart. All play fine on my Win 7 PC.

[markde]

I managed to get some (very hard to find) DL-RW DVD's for the purpose of temporarily writing 4.5GB+ mkvs to play on my sony blu-ray

Unfortunately my writer does not support erasing of these discs!

[raybarclay]

markde, check your DVD drive manufacturer's website. You never know, but there might be a BIOS update for the drive that would help. There is always a risk with hardware Flashing but I've never had any problems myself.

I've been using Verbatim DL disks from Amazon (about £18 for 25) with good results, which are not too expensive, I suppose, for single use - avoid unbranded ones or Amazon basics.

I've tried a couple of 6.5GB+ renamed mkv files recently via wired network from my NAS box and through a new laptop. The NAS box method struggled with high activity scenes - snow, rain, mist. The laptop also struggled at first but after some tweaks to VLC and Windows I have these playing perfectly now. The various tweaks depend on the computer OS, media player and hardware so I'll not go into specifics here. For me, audio/video hardware acceleration had the opposite effect to what I expected. The biggest issue in VLC is to ensure it is not trying to resize the view through zoom, crop, aspect etc.

No change on the MKV support over DNLA - the only recent change I noticed with the Sony was that the FIFA movies vanished as soon as the New Year began. My mixed experiences with the network tend to confirm my gut feeling that we will not see official support for MKV over DNLA any time soon.

[trippyfish]

Hi everyone,

Just thought I'd post some success I've had with getting a HD working on the BDP-S370. I wasn't happy with the memory stick size so I've persisted with a Seagate 500GB portable drive.

I had no luck with it formatted as NTFS or exFAT using Windows 7 built in formatting functionality. Would show up as 'unknown'.

I used Paragon Partition Manager 10 to format it as a FAT32 drive and this shows up fine. You have to wait about 20 seconds once you've turned the player on. It kind of hangs there for a bit and appears frozen but it eventually shows up. I'm assuming there will still be the file size restriction, but at least I now have a big drive to store videos on.

Here are the drives settings as display by Partition Manager. I changed the 'sectors per cluster' to 8 to match the formatting of a FAT32 memory stick I had which was working. Not sure if it really plays a part. Might do some more experimentation...

Type: Primary
File system: FAT32
Sectors per boot: 32
Sectors per cluster: 8
Partition ID: 0x0C FAT32 LBA
Total size: 465.7 GB
Partition size: 465.7 GB

Anyway, thought people might be interested.

BTW: I haven't had any success getting MKV files to work yet. I'm continuing to try a few.

[1redknap]

anyone know where the THX option is on "star wars....revenge of the sith" i can't seem to access it...no link ??

[tibidt]

OK, seeing that S370 does not support NTFS or exFAT formatted drives, has anyone tried ext3 ? This could be a solution for playing files over 4GB.
Has anyone tried playing .mkv files from DVD DL RW ?