How to convert an external drive or USB drive into a media player

This is a suggestion to Greyson Ferguson post on eHow.com.

Working with computers for so long gives me lots of reasons to buy storage devices such as USB drives and external hard drives. Keeping up with the updates and the increasing demand of storage capacity in this time, I was able to accumulate a number of these drives that some of them are not used anymore. They cost an amount that you don’t like to just put them in a corner and wait if they are needed in the future. “They got to have some uses.” This is the idea that gave me the motivation to research about how to use them as media players. I really love watching videos and pictures in my free time, so this will be very exciting and useful to me.

Basically, what I found out to do is to store all new and updated videos, music, and photos that I have to my USB or external hard drive (I have both), then connect them to a cheap and small DVD player that supports JPEG, MP3, MP4 and CD/DVD file formats and USB input. This kind of DVD players very common today, I even bought mine in a street store. And to complete my media player setup, I need to have an output device which is my LCD monitor with built-in speakers and RCA cable to be able to connect it to the DVD player. The illustration is presented below:

External drive/USB drive >>>> DVD Player >>> LCD monitor w/ speakers

Since I am using a spare external and USB drive, I made it sure that all other required materials are cheap and can easily be obtained. If you want to make your own DVD player based on this idea, you should have the following materials first:

1. External hard drive (you need its power supply and cable) or a USB drive.

2. DVD player – anything cheap that supports JPEG, MP3, and MP4 formats and USB input.

3. Monitor with speakers – any monitor that can be connected to your DVD player, most common are those having RCA connectors.

How to install it?

1. Make sure the external or USB drive is formatted with a PC running any Windows OS.
2. Save only JPEG (photos), MP3 (music), and MP4 (video) to it from your computer.
3. If using external drive, plug the power adaptor and insert the USB cable to the DVD player. If using USB drive, just plug it in to the DVD player.
4. Connect the DVD player with RCA cables to the monitor with speakers.
5. Turn all devices on except the USB drive.
6. Your DVD player will load the USB input while your monitor is displaying the welcome message from your DVD player. Make sure all connections are tight and secured if no display or loading happens.
7. After few seconds, the DVD player will now open a screen on your monitor displaying all files from the USB input like what Windows Explorer does.
8. Just select the file you want to open using the arrow buttons of your DVD player and then press ENTER or PLAY.
9. If a JPEG file is opened, it will be shown in your monitor. If an MP3 file is opened, the music will start playing. If an MP4 file is opened, the video will start playing.
10. You can adjust brightness, volume, and video quality from your DVD player or your monitor for more wonderful and meaningful media experience.

If your files need to be converted to the supported file formats, you can use this software. You can still use your DVD player if you want to play directly from CDs or DVDs. You can also add up to this setup with a TV converter to make your media entertainment complete. Read my article about it here: TITLE.