Moving to The Dark Side.... thinking of getting an IPAD, but have reservations.

[DannyDroid]

Hello,

I recently smashed my Android tablet (the original Asus Transformer) and am in the market for a new slate.

In general, I live in the Google/Android ecosystem. I have a Samsung S2, all my email and organisational aids are Google apps, so Android plays nice straight out of the box. I am, however, sorely tempted by the display of the new Ipad (as opposed to going for the Transformer Prime). I do have some worries, which perhaps someone here can help me address.

• Most of my video media is either XVID AVIs or MKV. I know there are IPAD apps that will play these, but do the render then natively in their full glory, or will they get re-encoded in the background, leading to weird sync issues etc....
• Most of this media is kept on a NAS drive which acts a DLNA server. Will I be able to access this and stream my MKVS, and AVIs ?

I can probably live with the other limitations (No flash, no sd card slot, no screen widgets etc), but not being able to catch up on The Daily Show episodes on my tablet is a deal breaker ! Also, is the WIFI reception good ? The Prime has an iffy WIFI rep, so hearing that the IPAD's WIFI is good would help swing it.

Im not looking to start a fanboy war here.... I just figure this is the best place to here the arguments "for".

Thanks !

 

[col.bris]

Welcome to the bright side........ Never dark here so relax. Just ask questions and hopefully between our team and some thousands of members we can make your experiance a positive one......

 

[DannyDroid]

Thanks Col. Feeling at home already...

 

[Tonyj]

Swapped my Samsung tab for an iPad 2 because of screen problems in the tab. Best decision I made. Still love my Android phone but for a tablet would not switch from iPad now, go ahead and buy with confidence,

 

[DannyDroid]

Thanks for your feedback Tony, but do you play AVIs and MKVs ? Any joy streaming from a media server?

 

[Rends]

I have a NAS and setup a folder as DLNA server. No problems with videos or music but my videos are already AppleTV2 ready in either .mov or .m4v format so i can't say anything about the formats you want to use. There are some DLNA player apps out there you might try out. I'm currently testing 8player lite wich seems to work fine so far ( except for playing the first 5 files only in the free version). It doesn't show you all the file information like you would see in the movies app, well in fact it shows the file name only.

 

[DannyDroid]

Thanks Rends. It looks like that app also supports mkv and avi, so that could work.

 

[MattIM]

I would caution you when comparing iOS with Android OS. If you are used to looking at what is going on in the file system to try to figure out how to fix something or how to make something work, the iPad will be frustrating. I have observed my Android equipped friends always tweaking their tablets to get better performance on any given tasks. On the iPad side, if some thing malfunctions, you close down all apps in the task bar and you do either a reset of the software or a power down.

My iPad (3rd generation) retina screen is the envy of those same Android friends. They often say, "too bad Apple doesn't allow an iPad to be able to install Android."

 

[DannyDroid]

Hi Matt
This is my concern. I had an Iphone 3G a few years ago, and when I moved across to android (HTC Desire, then Samsung S2) it was like a breath of fresh air. I like to have quite alot of control over how my device looks and feels. Having said that, I think that "tablets" are a bit different to phones as they are primarily "consumption" devices. My feeling is that the IPAD display is 2nd to none (right now) and that this should be my main criteria PROVIDED I can consume my media the way I want to. If I can easily stream from DLNA and play my AVI and MKVs, Im probably good to go. I might order one on the 14 day cooling off scheme and see how I get on.

 

[SquiderDragon]

I cannot really comment on streaming to iPad but its an interesting idea. I convert mkv format with handbrake of direct consumption and it is an amazing experience! However as I tend to consume content when away and would stream from home to my Samsung TV via Xbox 360 and laptop / external drive servers I don't normally consider this option. I do consume at home on iPad for some new shows e.g. Game of Thrones but again via conversion.

I know you won't be disappointed with quality of display and ease of use - but will keep a watch on thread re any useful tips on streaming content which I may like to try.

Good luck!

SquiderDragon

 

[SquiderDragon]

Hello,

I recently smashed my Android tablet (the original Asus Transformer) and am in the market for a new slate.

In general, I live in the Google/Android ecosystem. I have a Samsung S2, all my email and organisational aids are Google apps, so Android plays nice straight out of the box. I am, however, sorely tempted by the display of the new Ipad (as opposed to going for the Transformer Prime). I do have some worries, which perhaps someone here can help me address.

• Most of my video media is either XVID AVIs or MKV. I know there are IPAD apps that will play these, but do the render then natively in their full glory, or will they get re-encoded in the background, leading to weird sync issues etc....
• Most of this media is kept on a NAS drive which acts a DLNA server. Will I be able to access this and stream my MKVS, and AVIs ?

I can probably live with the other limitations (No flash, no sd card slot, no screen widgets etc), but not being able to catch up on The Daily Show episodes on my tablet is a deal breaker ! Also, is the WIFI reception good ? The Prime has an iffy WIFI rep, so hearing that the IPAD's WIFI is good would help swing it.

Im not looking to start a fanboy war here.... I just figure this is the best place to here the arguments "for".

Thanks !

Hi, after a bit of investigation there is an app for iPad called VLC streamer. There is a free version or a very reasonable £1.69 for full. It also directs for a download on either mac or PC. I have tried this out with both mkv and mov files. Works perfectly - will start to stream fairly quickly and uses an internal folder on host pc/mac and then plays seamlessly on iPad. There is a range of quality options for video and sound but my test has selected Hi Def and High sound quality. Plays perfectly well.

Thanks also for prompting the question initially and putting me onto another neat usage of the incredibly versatile iPad.

SquiderDragon

 

[AQ_OC]

I use AVPlayer to play MKVs on my iPad...no sync issues. I only do this for rips that come from DVD, as they are small enough not to need any encoding.

For streaming, I use AirVideo. The Server version runs on the PC and does on-the-fly conversion. It can convert completely or on the fly. These MKVs are bit-perfect rips from Blu-ray, so they are not encoded and can be many GB in size and typically could not ever land on my iPad.

I can't comment on AVI since I never use that format. You can check the apps to see if it does that format.

 

[DannyDroid]

Thanks for all the useful info. Great stuff. I think I will order one as there is a 14 day cooling off period (love the European distance selling directive !). I can then try these things for myself and see how it goes. Thanks again !

 

[altimax98]

Thanks for all the useful info. Great stuff. I think I will order one as there is a 14 day cooling off period (love the European distance selling directive !). I can then try these things for myself and see how it goes. Thanks again !

You will enjoy it. I don't stream video to mine, but like you I'm an Android guy big time. I've owned 7 different Android phones and a host of tablets. I love my Galaxy Nexus but right now Android doesn't even come close to competing with the iPad. The apps are built for the iPad and the system seems more fluid. The android tablets all have a feeling of haphazardly thrown together. Granted there are some things android does that just blow away iOS. Openess is one. (new iPad here, no jailbreak yet) the lack of file managers is a sad thing, and the closed culture of apps kinda sucks as well. I miss using my Android phone as a mouse for my tablet, and a few other things.

But I don't look back. The iPad is hands down my favorite device right now...... Sorry Galaxy Nexus


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[seneca18]

Agree with the above. To the OP I would say give it a try. Just learn all the ins and outs of the IOS ecosystem and make a list of everything you do not like or would like to change and wait for the jailbreak to come out. When I first made the switch there were several things I wanted to change and jailbreaking solved that. I grew out of that phase though and just learned to appreciate the simplicity of iPad/iPhone.