GnatGoSplat Posted June 20, 2008 Report Share Posted June 20, 2008 I am curious as to how the interface is with an external hard drive is on the F series. I have never liked how itunes organizes my music on my ipod, so a usb powered external hard drive would be great, you could organize all of the folders and genres yourself. then just plug it in. If the interface shows files and folders just like on the computer I will be selling my D3 along with the 160gb ipod, the ipod cable and bluetooth adapter for the new F-Series I'm curious about this too. Anyone? Anyone? I'd love to dump the iPod. I don't care for syncing or iTunes. I'd prefer to just dump my entire music folder onto a hard drive. Link to post Share on other sites
HiFiSi Posted June 20, 2008 Report Share Posted June 20, 2008 You can test out how an external hard drive would look on the F-series by simply plugging a small USB stick with some files/folders on it into the unit. Also, I believe the USB source has the very same interface as the SD card slot does. Link to post Share on other sites
cronerd Posted June 20, 2008 Report Share Posted June 20, 2008 what about playing movies off the sd card?? Link to post Share on other sites
HiFiSi Posted June 20, 2008 Report Share Posted June 20, 2008 Yes, you can play movies from both the SD card and USB input. I have tested them both myself and they both work. But for some reason video playback from the SD slot seemed a bit laggy to me, but tat may be because the video I was using was a very high resolution and the unit had to resize/shrink it while playing. Link to post Share on other sites
GnatGoSplat Posted June 21, 2008 Report Share Posted June 21, 2008 Are we talking about Divx AVI movies? Do they play in the proper aspect ratio? Link to post Share on other sites
hellodave Posted June 21, 2008 Report Share Posted June 21, 2008 Yes, you can play movies from both the SD card and USB input. I have tested them both myself and they both work. But for some reason video playback from the SD slot seemed a bit laggy to me, but tat may be because the video I was using was a very high resolution and the unit had to resize/shrink it while playing. Did you get smooth video playback from USB? What settings did you use? I've tried playing mp4 videos encoded to the spec in the manual and they're always laggy, even at low bitrates. Gnat - bizarrely, the F series won't playback Divx movies from SD/USB, only mp4 and (low resolution) wmv. The DVD drive will playback Divx, but not mp4. Logical eh? Link to post Share on other sites
HiFiSi Posted June 21, 2008 Report Share Posted June 21, 2008 After testing some different video formats out on an SD card, the ones that will play are AVI (DivX, Xvid), MP4, and WMV formats. MPG/MPEG videos will not play. As far as encoding settings and resolutions or whatever, I'm not sure. I just took some existing videos I had and dumped them on my SD card to see if they would play. And yeah, some were laggy. Bu if they are laggy you could lower the resolution some, or maybe get a better class SD card that has a higher data transfer rate. Link to post Share on other sites
hellodave Posted June 21, 2008 Report Share Posted June 21, 2008 After testing some different video formats out on an SD card, the ones that will play are AVI (DivX, Xvid), MP4, and WMV formats. MPG/MPEG videos will not play. Strange, I was using a USB stick, and I'm sure Divx avis didn't work. Are you sure you got an Xvid file to play? I couldn't get one to play from a DVD, but all the Divx files were fine. As for bitrate it wasn't down to the transfer speed of the USB stick - the stick I used can manage 7mb/s transferring from the PC, which is a lot more than the bitrate of the file. Remember though that the AVIC can't even show the map and play music from USB without stuttering, so I think it has some I/O issues Link to post Share on other sites
HiFiSi Posted June 21, 2008 Report Share Posted June 21, 2008 Well I'm not entirely sure what format of AVI they were, they were just some old videos I found lying around on my computer and I didn't really check. And I don't have them on my comp or the card anymore, so I can't even tell at this point. I didn't really bother with testing it out that much, because it just seems a lot more feasible to play the movies off of my ipod, because it uses the ipod to precess the video rather than the AVIC, plus I can fit a lot more on the ipod than an SD card or USB stick. Link to post Share on other sites
juice_e Posted June 23, 2008 Report Share Posted June 23, 2008 Can anyone tell me how the video on the USB or SD card compares to the video on the D3? I have the D3 and i am not happy about the video and the AUDIO quality with the video. Is it at all improved on the F700BT ? Also, does anyone know the difference in quality with Video on SD or USB on the F700BT compared to DVD video on the F900BT or F90BT?? Link to post Share on other sites
HiFiSi Posted June 23, 2008 Report Share Posted June 23, 2008 the 700, 900, and 90 should all be the same, they have the same screen resolution. As far as the quality of the F versus the D, the F has twice the resolution (500x240 vs 800x480) so videos look great. The F's screen is a bit dimmer than the D3, however. Link to post Share on other sites
juice_e Posted June 23, 2008 Report Share Posted June 23, 2008 Thanks ... Dimmer? really?... that sucks, i wished the d3 was brighter...... i was so used to the display on the 7800mp that anything else isnt bright and vibrant enough. How about the quality difference between DIVX and MP4 type. Because from what im hearing, SD card only does MP4 video.... Link to post Share on other sites
HiFiSi Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Thanks ... Dimmer? really?... that sucks, i wished the d3 was brighter...... i was so used to the display on the 7800mp that anything else isnt bright and vibrant enough. How about the quality difference between DIVX and MP4 type. Because from what im hearing, SD card only does MP4 video.... The quality of each just depends on how you encode it. You can have good quality mp4's and bad quality mp4's, and the same goes for divx. Link to post Share on other sites
juice_e Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Does anybody know what the best or max bitrate and otgher settings that the F series can handle? Is it the same as the D3 or can it handle higher bitrate ? or is it too early to ask this? Link to post Share on other sites
HiFiSi Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Should be covered in the manual. Link to post Share on other sites
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