Hi folks - am seriously considering purchasing an Android Tablet for watching films and tv series on when I travel to kill the time. However, unlike ipad with itunes movie rental/purchase, there doesn't seem to be an equivalent service on Android where I can easily and legally rent/buy media for playing on a tablet. Google doesn't have a service like itunes yet does it?
Any advice or tips? My only real thought so far is to format shift physical media I own so that I can transfer it onto a tablet, but that's a laborious task.
I am just transferring media from my NAS to the tablet for watching, I've not looked into a rental service or something of that sort. How you get the movie onto the tablet depends on the tablet and what connects to it, for me (Motorola Xoom) I simply browsed to my NAS and copied the movies across to the tablet over my WiFi.
I've been using ES File Explorer (free app from the Android Market) to connect to my network machines/drives etc.
Quote from: TeaLeaf;332921I am just transferring media from my NAS to the tablet for watching, I've not looked into a rental service or something of that sort. How you get the movie onto the tablet depends on the tablet and what connects to it, for me (Motorola Xoom) I simply browsed to my NAS and copied the movies across to the tablet over my WiFi.
I've been using ES File Explorer (free app from the Android Market) to connect to my network machines/drives etc.
Cheers TL - I don't use a media server at home, just keep my files on an external drive. I guess I can just hook the tablet into my pc or external drive and drag and drop (it's what I do for my HTC Desire)? Still doesn't get around the format shifting hassle but it'll do.
Quote from: ChimpBoy;332922Cheers TL - I don't use a media server at home, just keep my files on an external drive. I guess I can just hook the tablet into my pc or external drive and drag and drop (it's what I do for my HTC Desire)? Still doesn't get around the format shifting hassle but it'll do.
You can do exactly that. I've plugged an external USB harddrive into the Asus EEE Transformer and played stuff directly or copied it to internal memory. As far as formats goes you don't have to change them. You can play avis and most types of video formats (including HD ones) directly no conversion needed. Only advantage of conversion is the reduced size, but with memory cards so cheap these days you can afford to get a couple of big ones.
I have an Ipad2 and it's superb for watching movies.
Azul is an app which will play films in their native format and you just drag and drop. No need for using iTunes (apart from the transfer). So you can rip your current DVD's or record from your PVR etc and just drag them into the App.
I copy films and TV programs I haven't got time to watch from my PVR to the PC then into the iPad for watching on the go.
You could hang on till November and see what the Amazon Android tablet looks like. It will probably be pretty Amazon- centric but might be an alternative. Whether it's coming to the UK in November as well isn't certain though.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/02/amazon-kindle-tablet/
That review makes it sound like the budget tablets that nobody particularly wants. The current kindle has an amazing battery life, a nice form factor, good connectivity options. It's an electronic book. This tablet sounds like it's that, but without the good battery life and a colour screen. Being able to play videos is nice, but if you've only got 6GB to play with you're going to be pretty limited.
The new Archos tablets look nice (the 10.1 G9) still not convinced yet that any are good value or good enough at what they do yet.
I'm not sure about the Amazon tablet either. I didn't know about the six gig memory size either, that's a bit of a deal breaker. I'm not sure why the tech media seem think the Amazon product is going to be like the second coming. But the buzz surrounding it is pretty intense.