LG BD390 Do I need a Hard Drive

[Mudbug]

First I have to say I am blown away by this Vudu. The quality is great the speed is awesome. The hole lay out and user interface is easy to use and looks great. I hope you guys can keep up with what I know is going to be a huge hit.

With that said, I am new to this and trying to figure out some things.

I have an 8 Meg cable connection to the net; great speed till everyone in the area gets on at the same time then it spits and sputers.

So I need to know if I rent and wait to watch a movie does it download it to the memory in my player. So say I wait 30 min. then start watching I have plenty of buffer so there is no pause to load. (Only happened one time and not for long but would like to keep it from happening again) Kind of spoils the mood.

If this is so, I need to know how big is a HDX movie because my player only has 1 gig of memory so I might need to buy an external USB hard drive.

Then that takes me to new area, If I do buy a hard drive can I get something like 30 gig and move movies I buy to my computer to watch again latter through my network. Keeping my external hard drive clear for new stuff and setting up a server on my main computer with my whole movie library. This is what I would like to do. So I never have to get up and load a movie again (I know lazy right) But if I could just look through my library and start a movie with blue ray quality when ever I wanted that would be great.

[aaronwt]

Re: LG BD390 Do I need a Hard Drive

The BD390 only streams the VUDU content. I have no idea what the box has for storage for the streaming to use. For BD it has 1GB of storage but should be reserved for BD(to be profile 2.0 complaint) and not used for any streaming from VUDU, Netflix, etc.

I know from my tests it seems to have few seconds of buffer with a 3 bar HDX title. I can disconnect the network connection and it will still player for a few seconds before it stops.
Not sure exactly how many seconds since I didn't time it.

[skoretsk]

Re: LG BD390 Do I need a Hard Drive

I have a BD390 Wireless-N connected to a DLINK DIR-615 (Revision C) router, and haven't been able to get more than 1 bar and numerous re-loading of the movie on HDX. HD is a little better (get occational reloads). Any suggestions for improving my performance? I'd buy a better Wireless-N router if there are better alternatives to what I'm using. Thanks!

[aaronwt]

Re: LG BD390 Do I need a Hard Drive

I just set up a DIR615 at my girlfriends this weekend. it's slower than I'm used to at home where I get 100mbs+ speeds PC to PC over wireless but at home I'm using a much more expensive router DGL4500 and Access point (DAP1522) with gigabit ports.

her DIR615 got 85mbs transfer speeds over the wireless N.

I have no idea how well my BD390 would work on my Network. I'll try it sometime but i would have to make some change sfirst since I use 5Ghz N at home and only 2.4Ghz with G.

[skoretsk]

Re: LG BD390 Do I need a Hard Drive

I just set up a DIR615 at my girlfriends this weekend. it's slower than I'm used to at home where I get 100mbs+ speeds PC to PC over wireless but at home I'm using a much more expensive router DGL4500 and Access point (DAP1522) with gigabit ports.

her DIR615 got 85mbs transfer speeds over the wireless N.

I have no idea how well my BD390 would work on my Network. I'll try it sometime but i would have to make some change sfirst since I use 5Ghz N at home and only 2.4Ghz with G.

Yep, hope VUDU supports 5Ghz N on BD390 some day, would be enough justification for me to buy a 5Ghz N wireless router!

[bobpaule]

Re: LG BD390 Do I need a Hard Drive

Can someone confirm that we can store Vudu movies on say a USB2 1 Tb drive without going to the room with the stainless steel fixtures and small window?

[aaronwt]

Re: LG BD390 Do I need a Hard Drive

Can someone confirm that we can store Vudu movies on say a USB2 1 Tb drive without going to the room with the stainless steel fixtures and small window?

You can't store VUDU titles on any external device. It is a streaming service on the BD390.

[bobpaule]

Re: LG BD390 Do I need a Hard Drive

OK, last one for you, what happens if i choose the BUY option?

Will i need an external drive to record or will the player channel
the download to another computer on the DLNA network? This box
so far has recognized every computer in the house, even the Escient
server and the network printer.

[aaronwt]

Re: LG BD390 Do I need a Hard Drive

OK, last one for you, what happens if i choose the BUY option?

Will i need an external drive to record or will the player channel
the download to another computer on the DLNA network? This box
so far has recognized every computer in the house, even the Escient
server and the network printer.

VUDU on the BD390 is streaming. If you buy a title(as opposed to renting a title), that gives you the rights to view it by streaming any time you like.

The BD390 also shows other content. I can view my HD recordings made eight years ago which are in the transport stream format. It also decodes several other formats as well , either through the network connection or from a USB drive(Although I have not tried it with a USB since everythings available on my network)