[navnut]

Hi would there be a performance issue with playing back Hi Def movies from an external hard drive. As i understand internal hard drives are quicker then external ones.
thanks

[spot]

If you're plugged into a USB1.1 port then you can't play back Hi Def movies through it. If you're plugged into a USB2 or a firewire port then you can. It makes no difference which disk you have in the external caddy.

[navnut]

Does this hold true for Bluray and HD DVD movies which are heavily encoded?

[spot]

How do you propose putting either of those formats onto an external hard drive?

[navnut]

Hypothetically speaking if it could be done would there be a performance issue?

[spot]

HD DVD-ROM has a single-layer capacity of 15 GB, and a dual-layer capacity of 30 GB.

Assuming dual-layer and assuming that there's a minimum 2 hours DVD material on the disk that gives a transfer rate of 4.1MB/sec or 33 Mbit/sec. At its worst XP cuts the transfer capability of USB2 to 200Mbit/sec so you're well within the limits there. I agree there's compression but that's not processed until the datastream gets into memory.

A dual layer Blu-ray Disc can store 50 GB, almost six times the capacity of a dual layer DVD. so those figures multiply up by 5/3 and you average 55 Mbit/sec. That's still only a quarter of your Microsoft-restricted USB2 bandwidth.

Firewire's higher capacity than USB2.

[navnut]

Well you really know your stuff thanks for yur quick reply.
I guess this is how the 360 add on is able to play HD DVDs.
Ok so performance will only become an issue by the time it gets to graphics hardware or decoding.

[Carbon]

Idea: A hard drive hooked up with eSATA will also work - get an adapter, plug it into a internal SATA slot and a SATA power connector and you'll have 3.0gb/s which should be more than enough. As stated before, other things will work, but if you're really worried about it just check and see if you have a SATA slot handy.

[navnut]

I have an old motherboard i think has a sata connection on the board but pretty sure i dont have an esata slot. Could u post sum links of the kind of sata drives u wer suggestin?
thanks

[Carbon]

I dunno any UK sites, but you should be able to find eSATA drives pretty much anywhere alongside traditional USB ones. You can also take the disk out of the enclosure temporarily and remove the adapter while stringing a eSATA cable out instead, afaik most of them are actually SATA drives hooked to a USB adapter.