Portable media player added to RV for less than $100

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jeffcarp
Posts: 142
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 8:02 pm

Portable media player added to RV for less than $100

Post by jeffcarp »

I wasn't looking to do this project, but stumbled into it by accident. I got a "deals" email from Amazon and that prompted the idea.

When we travel for long distances we often rent 4 or 5 Redbox movies for the kids and wife to watch along the way. That works fine, but it is kind of a pain to find a Redbox to return them along the way or at our destination.

With this solution, I now have my entire digital movie collection (over 200 movies) in the RV always, for less than $50. Through a menu driven GUI on the TV screen, the family can scroll through the titles and select a movie with the remote control. The player uses either HDMI or composite audio and video (white and yellow RCA jacks). The media player works with photo files as well as music files.

The player has a USB jack for either a thumb drive or a portable hard drive. It also has an SD card slot. You could take your SD card out of your camera for example and put it right into this player and view your photos on your RV TV.

Here is a link to the media player:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006FN ... 05_s00_i01

I installed it by using 3M Command Damage-Free Hanging Strips (removable velcro) and attached it to the underside of the TV. There is an IR port for the remote control to work so you have to make sure that faces out. Here is a photo:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/v ... directlink

Next I bought a portable hard drive enclosure. I had a spare 500 GB 2.5" laptop hard drive laying around so I only needed an enclosure for it. The portable enclosures for the 2.5" drives are powered by the USB port so now power supply is required! In this case the drive gets its power from the media player's USB port.

I attached the drive to the rear of the TV using the same 3M strips. Here is a photo of the complete setup:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/k ... directlink

And from the front:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/a ... directlink

So the media player is powered with a power supply. The media player connects HDMI to the TV. The hard drive connects via USB to the media player. And that is it! You've got a portable media player in your RV for about $50 if you already have a hard drive, USB stick or SD card.

It remains to be seen how my mounting methods will hold up on the road, but since the command strips are removable, we'll just try something else if this fails.
2011 Born Free 22' Rear Side Kitchen
Silverhair
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Aug 16, 2005 10:04 am

Post by Silverhair »

This sounds like a very clever set up for watching movies. Can you describe how you copied the movies to the hard drive and what software menu program you used?
Jack and Katy Maxcy
2001 26RSB
jeffcarp
Posts: 142
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 8:02 pm

Post by jeffcarp »

If you have a TV with an HDMI connection then you can use a program called DVD Catalyst. It is about $10. You'd put the movie into your computer's DVD player and run DVD Catalyst. This will copy the movie to your external hard drive. DVD Catalyst preserves all copy protection so you must use the HDMI port for this to work. Only the HDMI port is capable of respecting and maintaining the copy protection. There are several ways to do the same copy procedure as above using software that removes the copy protection. However, since this is basically illegal in the US, I am not going to go into details here in a public forum. Google is your friend in this case.
2011 Born Free 22' Rear Side Kitchen
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