I’ve been enjoying watching movies on my Pioneer DVD player using a USB 1.0 port with DivX support for about six months. It’s been working flawlessly for playing Pioneer Movies directly from USB drives.
Recently, I attempted to make it easier for my wife to select from a larger library of pioneer movies. I plugged in an 80GB 3.5-inch portable HDD, which was full of movies. Unfortunately, this caused an issue. The DVD player didn’t seem to like the HDD and refused to play any movies or even recognize the files on it. Worse still, after unplugging the HDD, my usual 2GB thumb drive also stopped working, which had previously played pioneer movies without any problems.
Frustrated, I contacted Pioneer customer support. They provided some technical advice that was a bit confusing. Essentially, they suggested trying a reset by holding down the STOP and STANDBY buttons simultaneously for 3 seconds.
If the reset didn’t work, their next suggestion was to reformat the problematic drive (either the HDD or the thumb drive) using Partition Magic FAT32. They also mentioned ensuring the ‘Primary Sector’ was no larger than 32GB. I’m uncertain if I correctly heard “32GB”; it might have been 32MB or even 32KB. This part of the instruction was unclear.
After doing some online research and asking around, I’m still struggling to fully understand these instructions. My research leads me to believe that the ‘Primary Sector’ might be the same thing as the Boot Sector.
It seems that connecting the HDD with incorrect boot information might have confused the DVD player. The idea is that plugging in a device with the correct format will somehow “un-confuse” it and restore its ability to play pioneer movies from USB again.
I’m hoping someone in the community can offer some clarity on this situation. Has anyone else experienced similar issues with playing pioneer movies from USB drives on their Pioneer DVD players, especially after connecting a larger HDD? Any insights into the ‘Primary Sector’ and FAT32 formatting in relation to Pioneer DVD player compatibility would be greatly appreciated.
