LG BD530 Blu Ray player will play MPEG 4 files
 

I bought a couple of LG BD 530 Blu Ray players for Christmas to give to family members.

LG BD530 Video Players - Blu-ray but Better - LG Electronics US

The beauty of these things is that they only cost $79 and can play all types of other HD media via the USB port, Flash drive and DVD-R.

It's not a bad way to enjoy one's finished HD video projects without having to worry about authoring etc.

The ability to playback Blu-ray movies is a bonus.

I ordered another for myself, but so far it seems pretty solid.

Couple observations:

The BD530 player is picky about file extensions. If you have a quicktime workflow, .h264 files have to be named .mp4 or .mpg, .mpeg and then burned to a DVD-R.

.MOV will not work. The player will not see it.

Portable USB hard drives are not going to work. I think it draws too much power. Thumbdrives and flash drives are your best bet.

It will NOT play the raw .mov files from your Canon DSLR, whether you rename it not.

So far, I'm happy with this thing, with its limitations. The ability to hand HD files on a DVD-R and have easy playback is amazing.

:-)

Heheh... Yes, and the ability to play back any old random video file has been something I've long enjoyed about the Playstation 3. It's good to know there are some less-expensive alternatives now that allow the same thing. For home movies, it's been great to just be able to edit and then toss them (in loose file form) onto a DVD-RW or BD-RE and play them that way. Really cuts down on disc costs!

Best,
Aaron

Will the PS3 play HD files from a DVD-R?

Yes indeed, and I have made many such discs. Just beware the bandwidth constraints of DVD. While I have frequently thrown raw 24Mbit/s .m2ts files from my NX5 directly onto DVD-RWs and had them play just fine, fast-forwarding through these clips occasionally causes the PS3 to stop and report an error reading from the disc. This never happens with lower-bitrate material, such as the 16Mbit/s .m2ts files from my CX12, and has never happend with either when placed on BD-REs. Not too surprising.

Best,
Aaron

After a couple days playing with this thing, I've become quite ambivalent about it. It is finicky. Files created h.264 compression play fine...but some MPEG2, transport streams burned on discs do not.

I've burnt too may coasters this week.

I'm glad I still have my Western Digital HD player and my Network media tank.

If the transport streams aren't Blu-ray- or DVD-compliant, it really shouldn't be *too* much of a surprise when they don't play. Of course, I don't know what you've tried. Certainly, if you're making the files yourself, it would be safest to stick with the Blu-ray or DVD presets in whatever app you're using. HDV, something many of us have a lot of, is not Blu-ray-compliant. A few players seem to play it just fine. Others don't. And they're under no obligation to.

So don't be *too* hard on your new LG! :)

Best,
Aaron