Can I Display Song Titles from my iPod?

[cws666]

I recently bought a BDV-E3100 which has a USB port.  I have connected my iPod to this port and the system knows there is an iPod connected, however, it won't display any song titles. The iPod itself just shows the "Connected"  message while the TV just shows a meaningless list of folders with random four letter names e.g. FO1, FO2 etc.

Is there any way I can seen the correct album/artis/song names either on the iPod or on the TV screen?

Thanks for your help. 

[MK_Slinky]

I don't believe you can connect your iPod to your Blu-ray player, unless your user manual specifically states that you can .The files you see displayed on your screen are the files that your iPod uses to store music in however they will be random tracks in random folders. Only iTunes can read these folders successfully.

Ideally you need to copy your music to a high capacity USB thumb drive. Your player will be able to read that correctly and display song titles.

I can't check the manual for you at present regarding iPod compatibility and I'm only guessing from my own experiences. Please check your manual.

[Anonymous]

Hi there

iPods are not supported - only mass storage devices like USB drives and HDDs

Cheers

[MK_Slinky · Accepted solution]

@cws666 

I appreciate my reply might not be a solution for everyone but technically it is still possible to achieve what you want to with your blu-ray player. The question of whether you can do it really depends on how much free space you have available on your iPod?

As you likely know, an iPod is just a Hard Drive inside a flashy case with a bit of software to run it. Your iPod has a feature called disc mode. If you wanted to, you could put your own device into disc mode using iTunes and then using Windows Explorer create a new folder (give it a name such as my Music) on your iPod in which you could also drag and drop some albums into.

Once you've done that it would simply be a case of reconnecting to your blu-ray player and find the folder called 'My Music' or whatever you called it. This will work exactly like any other USB drive and the music will be displayed by title and show cover art as well if my memory serves correctly.

Looking back to my first reply, you might wonder how this method differs? It's quite simple really, iTunes arranges your music on your iPod in randomly named folders with odd names i.e. FO1, FO2 it does not store the music in any logical or understandable way, hence why your blu-ray player cannot decipher the track names on screen.

However, using disc mode you can create your own folder and sort the music how you want to, i.e. by Album , Artist or Track Order. For this to work successfully though you need to have copies of your albums stored in another folder outside of iTunes music directory on your computer. You simply copy music from that folder to the newly created folder on your iPod.

[cws666]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.  Enabling Disk mode works after a fashion.  I copied various cds into the newly created directory on the iPod, but, while I was able to see the song details, the Sony BDV-E3100 will only play one track at a time and then repeat it again in a loop.  The problem is that the salesman at Curry's PC World salesman assured me that the iPod would work fine using the USB port and this is obviously not true.  Album cover art is not shown but this is possibly because I failed to copy the relevant artwork onto the iPod. 

Thanks again for your suggestion.

Charlie Simpson

[MK_Slinky]

@cws666 

Hi there, I'm pleased you were able to follow my instructions at least, I do have a habit of giving too much information! I dare say that the sales person you spoke to probably just assumed that since it had a USB socket your iPod would be supported but this isn't always the case with every device.

I've been playing quite a lot of music from my USB thumb drive myself recently and the one thing I do notice is that the cover art isn't displayed. As the cover art is not shown when using your iPod either I'm guessing that the blu-ray players can't decode the ID.3 tags which embed the cover art. Sorry I wasn't sure about this when I replied first time around. I'm pretty sure this does work with CD's though as your player connects with Gracenote to get the album info.

Regarding the problem of the tracks playing one at a time and looping I think what you need to do is press OPTIONS button on your remote during playback and change the play options from the side menu which appears. Various settings and playback operations are available by pressing OPTIONS. The available items differ depending on the situation. Looped playback is one of them! Maybe this is your issue?

You may be happy with using this current method of playing music but have you ever considered buying a separate USB thumb drive like this one? Cruzer Fit 64 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive - £23.99 FREE UK delivery.

I bought two of these recently and at this price they're really good value! My iPod was only a 30 GB so it has double the capacity. The bonus of using such a device is that you could also put some MP4 movies on it too. They play really well via the USB socket and as it's so tiny you can leave it in all the time.