How to Watch Movies on PS3 From an External Hard Drive

Instructions

• 1

  Format your external hard drive. The Playstation 3 will not recognize drives formatted as anything other than FAT32. If your external hard drive is not already formatted as FAT32, connected it to your computer and use your operating system's disc format utility to format the drive.

• 2

  Load video files onto your external hard drive. Connect your drive to your computer and transfer your video files to the external drive. The Playstation 3 will play a large variety of video formats, but it won't play everything. Make sure your video files are compatible. The formats the Playstation 3 will play include: mp4, DivX/XviD, AVCHD, AVI, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 TS files. The two most popular formats it will not playback are FLV and MKV files.

• 3

  Connect your external hard drive to your Playstation 3. Connect one end of your USB cable to your external drive, and plug the other end of the cable into one of the USB ports on the front side of the Playstation 3. If your external hard drive uses it's own power supply, plug it in to a working outlet. Turn your external hard drive on.

• 4

  Turn on your Playstation 3. Wait for it to boot up and display the Cross Media Bar, otherwise known as the XMB, on your TV.

• 5

  Use your controller or Playstion 3 remote control to scroll along the XMB to the "Video" heading. Select "Video" and a list of available videos on your Playstation 3 will appear. You should see your external hard drive on the list.

• 6

  Scroll down to your external hard drive. Press the "Triangle" button on your controller or remote and select "Display All." This will display all of the video files on your external hard drive. Select the video file you want to begin watching your movie.