A Portable and cheap movie player.

[chiangrai]

Hi,

I have a big old fashioned lap top, and a bad back.

When i go away for the weekend it doubles the weight of my luggage on my bad back.

I see people with these new slimline things,I think they are called iPods,are there any of these that don't do anything except play videos from a USB or some thing.

and cost that much.

Sorry to be so outdated but all help would be welcome.

Thanks.

[KittenKong]

All Android tablets can be made to play back videos, though screen resolution and video quality may be different from one to another. You may not notice the difference but you should test it before purchase. Prices go from a couple of thousand Baht to 20K+ depending on size, quality, brand and features. These devices will do a thousand other things as well as play videos (email, web-browsing, games, play music/audio, internet radio/TV, open Office documents etc etc) so they are pretty good value, and most of these extra functions are available without any payment at all.

Personally I wouldn't touch Apple devices with a bargepole.

[chiangrai]

I only want a cheap and small object for when I'm away for the weekend.

Is that what there called Android tablets,are they only made by apple.

Can you use an USB with them.

I just want low teck,stick a few videos on my USB and off I go.

Thanks for your help

[kkerry]

From what you are write, it sounds like a tablet is what you are after. There are several types but the most popular is the iPad from Apple with the other very popular tablets being those using a operating system called Android,with many different brands to chose from.

Ipads are pricier but they are good at what they do, with a high quality display in a compact and classy format. Android tablets are very popular because they tend to be less expensive and have a more varied range of sizes and options to chose from. Few tablet users rely on USB sticks as most tablets, designed to be as thin as possible don't have a full size USB slot anyway. Instead, many, but not all, Android tablets allow you to insert a micro SD card in much the same way you would use a USB stick. It's a much cheaper way of adding storage to your tablet. Ipads, Kindles and Google Nexus tablets don't use micro SD cards so you have to decide how much storage you require and select the appropriately sized model if you decide on one of them.

If you are only watching movies then a tablet with a resolution of 1280 x 720 and an micro SD card slot is where I would begin looking. Samsung, Asus, Acer are some brands that fit this category but take a look at some in action to see if you are happy with the screen. You can get full HD resolution screens which are really sharp but they will be higher priced. Google "best tablets 2013 android" to see what is available and to give yourself a feel for what to look for. If you are not so fussy about the screen then there are plenty of cheap 7" Android tablets about. You can get an i-Note from i-Mobile with reasonable features for 5,000 baht but there are hundreds of other similar models from a hundred other brands also available. Cheaper priced models are available but for an adult I wouldn't go much below 5000 as you get what you pay for although many people are probably happy with their 2999 baht no name tablet.

Edited December 25, 2013 by kkerry

[KittenKong]

I only want a cheap and small object for when I'm away for the weekend.

Is that what there called Android tablets,are they only made by apple.

Can you use an USB with them.

You dont seem to understand some basic principles.

A tablet is a thin rectangular device larger than a phone and smaller than a laptop.

Apple is a brand and they make their own tablets (called iPads). They also make their own operating system (iOS) specifically for their devices. Apple products tend to be expensive as Apple generally only make top of the range products rather than cut-down models. Marketing and packaging also accounts for quite a lot of the sale price of Apple products. As such they are probably not going to be what you are looking for.

Other manufacturers (like Samsung and very many others) make their own tablets of various shapes and sizes and prices and quality levels, but they dont make operating systems. They just use the Android operating system which is made by Google. This means that with Android devices you get a very big choice of manufacturer and price and product, but you retain a huge amount of software choice and compatibility as they all basically run the same software.

You also have a few Windows-based tablets but these are unlikely to suit your requirements.

I suggest that you go to a shop like Powerbuy and look at a Samsung tablet and try to work out what screen size you like best (7, 8 and 10 inches are common sizes) and think about how much you actually want to spend (Android tablets are anywhere from about 3,000B to about 15,000B). Based on that information it should be possible to make some suggestions.

Most tablets have built-in storage for your video files (the amount and type varies according to how much you pay for your device) and they can also connect to external storage like USB drives if required.

If you really only want to play DVDs/videos on this device then there are some very cheap portable DVD/media players that can be had for prices around 2,000 - 5,000B, though personally I would rather buy an Android tablet for everything else it can do as well. You will find these devices in places like Powerbuy also.

[muratremix]

Perhaps he wants a small mediaplayer to hook up on TV.

[Chicog]

Note to OP: If you want it for travelling, check the battery life.

[chiangrai]

Wow thanks a lot for all the info guys.

I've learned a lot.

I still don't know what I want.I know I use it so little that I'm in the 2-3k bht bracket.

A portable DVD player sounds the easiest but I presume I would have to burn the Cd,s before I go away.

I presume my laptop would have to have a card reader to put extra storage but I'm only talking about 15 movies.

A DVD player with a USB plug,a head phone plug,an electricity plug in and a 2500bht price tag would be perfect if there is such a thing.

If not a cheap tablet with a usb conection.

Does that narrow it down for you.Excuse my low teck and thanks again for your help

[muratremix]

Portable dvd player thing is heavier than most tablets.

For 2-3k baht you can buy a cheap chinese tablet. Most of them don't support usb on the go but they have microSD slot so you can use it to store/transfer movies. Class 4 microsd cards are cheaper to buy and enough to play movies.

[Chicog]

A standard, watchable movie rip is 700Mb and you can get 64Gb cards quite cheap, = ~90 films.

[kkerry]

 

Wow thanks a lot for all the info guys.

I've learned a lot.

I still don't know what I want.I know I use it so little that I'm in the 2-3k bht bracket.

A portable DVD player sounds the easiest but I presume I would have to burn the Cd,s before I go away.

I presume my laptop would have to have a card reader to put extra storage but I'm only talking about 15 movies.

A DVD player with a USB plug,a head phone plug,an electricity plug in and a 2500bht price tag would be perfect if there is such a thing.

If not a cheap tablet with a usb conection.

Does that narrow it down for you.Excuse my low teck and thanks again for your help

 

If you want something compact then a tablet will be better for you than any portable DVD player, plus you don't have to waste time burning DVDs if you have downloaded movies on your computer.

An android tablet with a micro SD card slot is what people use, don't waste time your looking for a tablet with a standard USB port. You will find connecting your tablet to a computer and transferring what you want over to it the easiest way to go about things. Your laptop does not need to have a card reader as your computer sees the tablet as it would an external hard drive. If you buy a tablet then at the same time get yourself a 16 GB micro SD card. A class 4 Kingston card is only 350 baht. You can get smaller and cheaper but you don't really save much so just get a decent size.

This is slightly over your budget but it's been out a while now so has come down in price according to the link so seems good value to me. You can even hook it up to a TV to watch on a bigger screen, handy if you stay in hotels with a modern TV. http://www.siamphone.com/en/i-mobile/i-note_wifi_3.htm If you really don't want to spend much then Tesco has plenty of low end no name cheap tablets but you do get what you pay for i.e. cheap usually means laggy with a poorer quality screen.

[chiangrai]

KKerry,

Just just a few more more questions,

how do you connect the tablet to a laptop to transfer the videos,

and what do you mean by laggy.

Also do all these plug into the wall and headphones,I presume they have no speakers.

Invadet have a lenova for 4200bht,the same brand as my laptop.

Thanks for all your help so far

[kkerry]

The tablet should come with the appropriate cable. You will need to read the manual for the procedure.

Laggy as in slow, hesitant when you are doing things on the tablet aka not enough grunt

Plug in to a power point for recharging the built-in battery. Cheaper tablets tend to have low battery life, maybe only a few hours. The way around poor battery life when you don't have a power point handy is an external battery, computer malls are full of them these days, 5600 mAh is about 600 baht and will at least double your tablet life away off the grid. Most have built in speakers but like cheap laptops, don't expect much. If they are really bad then you can use headphones or plug in a mini external speaker, they sell for 100-1000 baht, try a few out if you can but 250 baht seems to be the starting point for anything not complete rubbish.

I like Lenovo as a brand but... google reviews of whatever model you are interested in and if you can see one in person all the better. A friend bought one recently, not the cheapest one either but the screen quality... anything but straight on viewing was very poor, very disappointing.

[chiangrai]

O.K,

So can you plug them into the wall and watch a movie while the battery automatically charges.

I mainly want them to keep me in my hotel room and out of the bar when I'm away on buisness

[chiangrai]

Just to let you know,

I bought a 7 inch lenova in tesco's for 3990bht.

Will probably be opening a new post on how to use it.