Panasonic manuals can I watch movies downloaded from my computer to an external hard drive on this tv. does it need to be in Apple or PC format? how do I connect and view on the tv?

Your external hard drive is probably formatted in Microsoft's NTFS format. Older TVs do not recognize this file system.

Try to connect to the TV a Hard Drive formatted in the FAT32 file system. It is possible to convert NTFS drives to FAT32, using a computer.

Note: Even if the TV will recognize the Hard Drive, it may or may not play the files (videos, movies, music) stored on the drive. Check the TV's manual for the supported files.

What kind of hard drive do you have? If it doesn't have a USB end, then you need a special cable to do it. Depends on what kind of hard drive you have, SATA - USB or IDE - USB. And not all TV with USB slot supports movies through USB, some models supports only music/pictures. So make sure your TV supports movies through USB too.

The USB port on the TV might not have enough power to power the external hard drive. Can you try putting a movie on a USB memory stick instead, and see if that works?

Movies stored on a hard drive are not in a format that can be readily used by a TV. You need something to read the movie file, usually a laptop computer or a DVR of some type. Good luck.

If you want to hook up any kind of external HDD or flash drive via USB to your PS3, it needs to be formatted in FAT32.

Hi rox09
Well you can rip your DVD to any external drive using and third party DVD ripping software ,once you do that you will get a AVI,MPEG and any common fomats your DVD player supports

Inorder to play those files in your DVD player ,you need the check whether your DVD has a USB input port or else if you laptop or computer has a S-video out put and your TV has S-Video input ;you can play directly from your laptop/computer to the TV using a S-video Cable which is available in any Computer shop.
I hope this helps 
VJ

The LG's will support an external USB hard drive, but it seems the USB support was intended for thumb drives, so yuo need to do the following to get it working:

1. the drive must be formatted FAT32 (like thumbdrives)
2. keep the file names short
3. keep the directory structure simple and as flat as possible

I have a 60GB laptop drive in a USB 2.0 enclosure drive working really nicely with good transfer rates. It takes it's power from the USB socket and is working fine.

Hope this helps.

Both methods will work, but you will tend to have more control on the quality of the saved video if you "rip" the DVD yourself.  There are several methods to rip a DVD.  One, you can use the program SUPER, which is free, to rip to a single file.  Otherwise you will have to use several programs.  The second method is to use DVD Decrypter to rip the dvd. Then use VOB2MPG to combine the separate VOB files.  Finally, use SUPER to compress the DVD video to your liking.  In order to use your external hard drive to display to your TV, you have 2 choices.  One, move your computer to your living room and buy an aftermarket video card to output to the TV.  Two, buy a cheap computer which can run video w/o lagging and install an aftermarket video card to output to the TV.  I hope this helps in your DVD video adventures.