I have a Blu-ray disk player which has a HDD. I can connect it to my router with an Ethernet cable.
I would like to move videos between it and my PC, mainly to play them from the player. There are several applications available which perform different functions that I’m not familiar with. I’m not sure what to use. I’m not interested in anything that is not currently maintained or needs compilation. RPMs or Flatpaks are fine.
Suggestions please…
Without knowing more about your player it is difficult to answer.
What is its OS?
What size is the HDD?
Does it work as an NAS where you can store data? Or is it self contained and only provides outbound connections?
I would assume that since it is a Blu-Ray player with an HDD it may have the ability to rip the videos to the HDD, but that does not mean it would allow uploading videos from elsewhere.
Personally I use a PC for my media server using makeMKV to rip the videos and plexmediaserver to provide streaming viewing.
It’s a Panasonic DMR-BWT750.
What is its OS?
“It runs on a proprietary operating system designed specifically for Panasonic’s home entertainment devices. It doesn’t use a traditional OS like Windows, macOS, or Linux but instead employs a customized firmware [sic] tailored for its recording, playback, and media management features.”
What size is the HDD?
500 GB
It may have the ability to rip the videos to the HDD, but that does not mean it would allow uploading videos from elsewhere.
There is a menu option for copying HDD to disk and vice versa. Copyright software might of course stop that. I mainly want to copy on videos I’ve already got on HDD.
Does it work as an NAS
Will check manual. I tried installing Gerbera and MiniDLNA and when on the media server I choose “Home Network (DLNA)” I can now see menu options to select them but if I do they don’t show anything.
I use a PC for my media server
I’m still mulling over what the best arrangement would be. Simple and short audio-visual connections, not having to start the computer, use of remote, the Blu-ray/DVD drive and the extra HDD space sway me towards using the player.
The Blu-ray drive is also a big advantage. I can’t play Blu-ray disks on Fedora-41 and it won’t play DVD-RW disks, I imagine the first is for copyright reasons, and for the second I’ve been told that there is a potential virus risk with the way DVDs used to be recorded. Having investigated getting round that I decided I had better ways to waste a week or two.
Did you read the user manual for that device.
I checked on panasonic and it is a dedicated device that does not appear capable of receiving external files. As with most DVR type devices it apparently only reads and uses HDDs that it has formatted itself and the data on the disk appears to be encrypted so it cannot be read/played elsewhere.
It does appear to be capable of recording video from connected devices but not for storing media files such as mkv or mp4. It probably works very well for its intended use but seems difficult to convert to other uses.
The latter part of the manual shows connection using a DLNA media server that might help with your wishes (about page 60 and later)
The manual seems fairly complete in what its capabilities are.
I can normally dip into a manual and look at the interesting bits, but with this I’m not familiar with the concepts and TLAs etc. I’ll try and read the whole shebang.
I do not have a similar device so cannot give first hand advice.
The best advice I can offer is RTFM (Read That Fine Manual) and do so in detail.
It may require an external media server as I already mentioned and definitely will require a bit of finagling the wifi network.
Hi, I have a similar device from LG and it also connects to the network by cable. In its menu I can dive into the internal disk with a kind of file-manager but also see other devices on my home network, making it possible to copy files from my Nas to the internal disk and vice versa. I can’t imagine Panasonic can’t do that.
You really have to read the manual to get a better understanding what the machine is capable of. The manual tells you how to connect (through settings) with your home network. Once that is done you should be able to copy files over and watch them from the internal disk through HDMI on your TV.
Success.
I skimmed through the networking portion of the product manual and it looks like you’ll need something like Plex Media Server or Jellyfin set up to act like a DLNA server. That way, you can stream media that you’ve added to Plex or Jellyfin to the Blu-Ray player.
There does not seem to be a method of transferring files to/from the player’s hard drive using the network.
You are correct in both statements. You need a DLNA server to be able to be able to connect this device and stream videos.
Also simple file copying from internal HDD to some sort of external HDD (Nas) is impossible. You can however connect a disk through USB and copy from there.
Thing is:
before you do this make sure you have a backup of your data because when the disk is attached the first time it will be configured the Panasonic way and all data will be erased.
Do you have this device for a long time already? I saw it is no longer offered for sale so it must be an older machine.
Yes you can connect a disk by USB.
I don’t think it is possible to copy anything from that disk to a pc or other device since it appears to be uniquely formatted and structured so the data on it is not in mkv, mp4, av1, or any other normal media format.