I have downloaded movies from a Dish hopper w/sling to a WD 2TB external hard drive. I am getting rid of Dish because of too many DVR failures. How can I play movies from my external hard drive on a DVD?
I believe you can refer to your DVD player's manual (I assume), if there's a USB port, there is a way. Another way to use the WD external is to hook it up to the TV. However, I'd check the file system compatibility of the TV and the player with the drive beforehand. You mentioned that it's Dish-formatted, what is the file system exactly? I suggest you to do this because incompatibility with some devices could lead to file system corruption and that would require you to format, which would erase your movies.
In case you can't remember, I'd recommend hooking the drive to a computer and checking the file system in Disk Management and backing up the movies just in case.