Which tablet PC to go for ? Mainly movie playback wanted.

[LOGiC]

@all

I hope that this is the right thread for my question. I am looking to buy a tablet pc soon, but I really don't know if I should go for iPad 2 or wait for an android tablet i.e. Motorola Xoom.

The iPad2 just has a resolution of 1024x768 pixels while the Xoom has 1280x800.

The iPad2 has a 4:3 ratio, while the Xoom has a 16:10 ratio as I can remember. The colours are said to be much better at the iPad 2.

Which one would you guys go for ? On a 10" display, are there any noticeable quality differences when playing back a 720p file ? I am travelling quite a lot and would like to use it mainly for movie playback. I would reencode all the stuff to the resolution of the tablet of course, but what do you think which one would look better ?

Thanks in advance and best regards!

Logic.

[Selur]

Samsung Galaxy 10.1v might also be worth a thought,...

[Przemek_Sperling]

Barnes & Noble Nook Color http://www.betanews.com/article/Can-Nook-Color-be-a-decent-Android-tablet-without-being-rooted/1303749611

[RNiK]

Personally I would not go for iPad2 "to use it mainly for movie playback". I mean, probably you can watch movie comfortably on iPad2 too, but the lack of USB port and the historical Apple wrong approach to multimedia formats/multimedia players (QuickTime, AppleTV & Co. :rolleyes:) are enough to discourage me.

If you don't need "phone features" you can avoid Samsung Galaxy and Motorola Xoom as well and take a look at simpler/cheaper Honeycomb tablet such as $450 Acer Iconia A500 (http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/blogs/gadgets-on-the-go/acer-iconia-a500-multimedia-20110421-1dpy4.html). ;)

[Doom9]

Does it have to be a tablet?
I was looking for a portable movie watching device myself about 1.5 years ago. I was about to go on a 6 week trip and wanted to bring some entertainment of my own. It was at that time where the rumor mill was already spinning full throttle about the impending apple tablet finally named iPad - and at first I thought tablets aren't that bad of an idea.
Then again, I figured I might want to use the device to visit the forum too, look at road maps, book a day trip, check the weather and the likes (it's just more convenient than on a smartphone) - and when it comes to typing, you can't beat the keyboard. Considering the amount of time and effort required to re-encode more than a handful of files to make them compatible with a given device, I finally settled on a subnotebook - the acer 3810tz - 1.6kg, 13.3" 1368x768 screen, 1.6 GHz dual core Pentium CPU, and 300mbit/s WirelessN and GBit Ethernet. It uses intel's GMA HD GPU which is supported by MPC-HC, so instead of re-encoding, I could just transfer a bunch of files from my NAS to the device (and while at home stream them over WiFi... so the device has also become the official entertainment device for my home training equipment).

Acer also made (and makes) then in 11.6" format sporting a lower weight, or larger formats (which everything except weight unchanged - and starting with 14" they also sport a DVD-ROM.. something which I no longer need seeing as my entire DVD collection is stored as ISO files on my NAS). The device lasts pretty long - I figure about 6" at full brightness watching HD movies (remember there's DXVA so CPU usage is somewhere between 2 and 5%), more if you play with brightness. And the whole thing set me back a little over 700 bucks when I got it (when I got back from the holidays, Acer had a new SKU that came with Win7 out of the box and they jacked up the price by 200 without giving you anything over the old SKU (other than Win7.. but I upgraded to Win7 for shipping cost only)).
Seeing as that price is well within tablet price range and that Smartphones have since become WiFi hotspots, I rather carry an additional few 100grams and be a lot more flexible. And if money is less of an option there are more compact / sexier models - e.g. the Macbook Air (despite the Apple logo and the price tag they're quite capable Windows boxes, too (and you need to run windows if you want hardware acceleration for any kind of content, not only the apple approved codecs)). Depending on how the whole Thunderbolt bridge story comes along (eSATA/USB3 is a must for any future machine of mine), a SandyBridge based Air could be a worthy successor of my Timeline.

[RNiK]

As alternative to Doom9's proposal (Acer 3810tz) you can take a look at ASUS Eee pad Transformer (http://www.asus.com/Eee/Eee_Pad/Eee_Pad_Transformer_TF101/).