I have a bluray player that has a USB interface that allows me to plug external hard drives and pendrives for me to play movies or music files.
I was wondering if it's possible to have the PC or notebook or any other computer-like device using a USB-USB cable and make the bluray player detects this as an external drive.
Note: I'm using a bluray player as example but it can be the same for DVD players, TV or sound sytems.
13 Answers
I don't know of any easy way to use a laptop/desktop as a mass storage device. One way to have the player read the drives is to use an inexpensive external USB drive reader, although you have to open the casing or remove the drives to plug them into the reader.
Personally I would just purchase an external drive. Also make sure the device can read NTFS filesystems before spending time on this.
2Yes there is good sir, here it is exactly what you want:
3No, this isn't possible without specialized hardware. USB networks are organized as a tree, with the host controller at the root, hubs as branches and the devices as the leaves.
Normal PCs or notebooks are not designed to act as USB devices. They only act as USB hosts. And you can not emulate it in software, because they don't even have the right connectors for that. You see, there are actually two kinds of USB plugs:
You have certainly seen the left one. This is an USB-A plug. This plug always goes towards the host of the USB tree. It can't go towards a device.
The right one is an USB-B plug. This one is the one you use when the connection points towards the devices of the USB tree. You might not see that one too often in the wild, because USB cables are usually fixed directly to devices or hubs. But there are USB devices where the cable can be removed, and in that case you usually have this connector (or a miniature version of it, like with cellphones).
If you wanted a PC or notebook to act as a USB device instead of a USB host, then it would need a port which fits an USB-B plug. Or alternatively, a USB-A plug coming out of the device (like on a thumb drive). And I don't think I ever saw that on a PC or notebook.
So how does the device linked in the answer by Guillermo Siliceo Trueba work? What this plastic box in the middle of the cable contains isn't actually one but two USB devices. One connects to the first host and the other to the second host. These two USB devices then communicate with each other internally through a protocol which isn't USB. Which is also why this devices requires a device driver to communicate. There is no direct USB connection between the two hosts. The USB protocol wasn't designed for point-to-point communication, so this feature needs to be emulated by a custom device driver. Which is required on both devices. So you probably won't be able to use it with your blu ray player.
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