Android Tablet: Galaxy Tab?

[Gun-dam]

Hi guys,
So I'm looking for an android tablet for on the go browsing and mainly video playback (anime and movies).
3G isn't neccassary
Responsive capactive display
Im currently leaning towards the Samsung Galaxy Tab as it is around £320 at carphone warehouse for 16gb model with 16gb SD card (exc. vat)

Other devices I am considering include the Archos 101 and the Advent Vega.

Does anyone have experience using any of these? So far the only tablet I've had any real time with is the IPad and while its a good bit of kit its not for me, I do however like the display's responsiveness and colour reprasantation.

Does anyone know which if any of these devices can play AVC High Profile as most of my media is in this format.

Thanks

[capt_cornflake]

If you have to buy now, I'd go for the galaxy tab. Most of the other tablets around at the moment just aren't up to the job.

However if you're not desperate I'd wait a few months as there are shed loads of reasonable looking android tablets due for release in the first half of this year that would give the galaxy tab a run for it's money.
Also the next android version (honeycomb) is expected to be optimised for tablets. There are rumours that there may be hardware restrictions (eg. dual core processors) which would mean that the tab wouldn't be compatible, however there were similar rumours about gingerbread which turned out to be rubbish.

I don't watch much in the way of video, but I'd expect AVC to be fine on most android devices.

[Gun-dam]

I'm not especially desperate really, I heard about the Galaxy Tab 2 having a dual core Tegra 250 and the AMOLED display I think, but I'm unaware if they actually showed it as CES? I only saw the wifi only Galaxy tab..

[burble]

I've got a Galaxy Tab. It's pretty good but not earth shattering. The screen isn't quite as sharp as I'd like either.

I'm not getting on too well with Android, it seems to have problems playing just about every video format I throw at it. Some it'll just refuse to play (unless I pay for a new app) and some you end up with a couple of second offset between the audio and video which is annoying to say the least.

Maybe I'm being too impatient but I'm past the time when I used to want to mess about to get stuff working. I'd be much happier if I took it out of the box and it did what I wanted.

[Gun-dam]

Thanks for your response burble. I've been looking into playback on the tab and I came across this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LqoBYDzEjI

from this it seems the Tab can play alot of formats, but you seem to say otherwise, is it possibly if you could confirm that it can play AVC High Profile? With rockplayer app if not the standard video player.

[burble]

I don't have anything in AVC to test, can you upload a file for me to try?

[amdavies]

I have an Advent Vega (Tegra 250 dual-core) I tried the 720p and the 1080p clip of the film FCL from the site here:-

http://www.elecard.com/en/download/videos.html

Neither played well, both ran at about 50% of the intended speed at best.

[Gun-dam]

I have an Advent Vega (Tegra 250 dual-core) I tried the 720p and the 1080p clip of the film FCL from the site here:-

http://www.elecard.com/en/download/videos.html

Neither played well, both ran at about 50% of the intended speed at best.

Was this with rockplayer app?

[amdavies]

Was this with rockplayer app?

Yup, version 1.5.5
With hardware decoding enabled, 720p played slowly but 1080p didn't play at all (it even crashed the player once). With hardware encoding turned off, both resolutions played equally slowly but this time with the bonus of artifacts.


I do seem to recall that D_Link chose an Intel chip over a Tegra 2 for the Boxee Box because of concerns about the latter's ability to play certain files:-

"...as Boxee started doing some stress tests, they realized that Tegra 2 wasn't living upto expectations. In particular, they found that the Tegra 2 was incapable of playing back high profile 1080p H.264 videos at even 10 Mbps.":-
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3912/b...inside-story/2


http://tegradeveloper.nvidia.com/teg...s-t20tegra-250


I've downloaded four other 720p clips from the elecard.com site but none of them seem to want to play. If there's any others you want me to try, feel free to post a link.

[vicar]

If you can wait, there is a new tablet on the 'market Notion Ink'. If it turns out to actually exist it is the one to get. Unfortunately no one has had one actually delivered yet.

http://www.notionink.com/

[[GSV]Trig]

I was looking at the Archos 101..

[Gun-dam]

While I am in no rush, I'd rather not wait indefinitely. Last year I was looking to buy the wepad/wetab that never came out. I want a tablet to play avc high profile but if non are going to in the near future I may as well buy from whats out now.