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I have finally decided to buy my Dad a portable HDD that he can plug into the TV to play movies for Christmas. I know they exist... trouble is I know nothing about which ones are good and have no idea what they are called (so to look for a review).

I'd like it to play as many formats as possible...(minimum XVID and DIVX), Be atleast 200gb...be easy to use (he's no super user).

Look forward to your recommendations,

Merry Christmas

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2 Answers

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Instead of a specialized HDD that plugs into a TV, I bought a DVD player with a USB port that allows me to plug in any external hard drive.

Philips DVP5990 HDMI 1080p Upscaling DVD Player - $39 at Amazon (or regularly found for $29.99 refurbished). There are later models so research if they are worth it.

The slick thing is that this DVD player has a USB interface. Plug in an external HDD and play movies, music, and photos (DivX, MP3, WMA, JPEG, CD, (S)VCD, DVD, DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW movies right off the hard drive.

So not only do you have a nice up-sampling DVD player, but you can attach any variety of much less expensive external hard drives which works equally well attached to your computer.

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I have this same model and an earlier version from Philips that I have used for some time. They work well on non HD content. I recently purchased a Western Digital Media Player because it will play HD content (.mkv as well as multiple other protocols) while the Philips players will not. – gadzooks64 Jan 7 at 18:36
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i'm using a 500 GB LaCie LaCinema HD Rugged

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robust, plays Full HD video, supports a nice variety of formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI, VOB, IFO, ISO), MPEG-4 (AVI, XviD), MKV, H.264, WMV9, and VC-1). plenty disk space (easy to upgrade) and reasonably priced compared to 2.5" models.

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Looks good... not sure I need it to be rugged though... I don't see him taking it to a construction site or anything :) – Mark Dec 18 at 17:38
the ruggedness wasn't necesseraliy what sold me (although it's nice to have another layer of protection with portable gadgets), it was the specifications of the player and the price. if portability is not so much an issue, you might have look at the WD Live player ($120), similarly impressive specs and you can connect any USB storage device. – Molly7244 Dec 18 at 18:32
"Full HD" is a pet-peeve of mine - what's it going to mean in 5 years time, when 1920x1080 is low-res? – Phoshi Jan 7 at 17:03

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