Movies on a Tablet

[TomG2]

I have a Samsung Tab 2.0 7 Android tablet and would like to use it to watch movies. What is the best (cheapest) way to do this? I have slow Wi-Fi in this RV park for Internet access. I want to store them for watching later.

[tatest]

Forget my Amazon suggestion, they are not supporting rentals to tablets, except maybe Kindle Fire. And moe about streaming than downloading. They want to compete with Netflix, not with their own sales of DVDs and BluRays.

Apple business model on movies is download a purchase to (iOS) tablets, phones, Touch, but rentals or limited time to play for downloads to computers and Apple TV.

I checked prices iTunes Store vs Google Play, they seem to be in the same place for same classes of material, whatever is commercially "hot" is going to be about what it would cost on a disc. Google does have some stuff that is free, lowest prices I see in iTunes Store is about a dollar for a TV show.

[tatest]

TomG2 wrote:
I looked at what Google has to offer and the idea of paying $4-$16 for a movie slowed my enthusiasm somewhat. Does anyone offer a "View it one time" or "View it for 48 hours" program? Something like renting from Red Box for instance. I must be missing something as I see others watching movies on their tablets and I doubt that they pay $12 for the privilege.

I think iTunes has rentals on terms like that, but don't know that the prices are much lower than Google Play. Owners of the content determine the prices to the viewer, and for a particular title, there is not much difference in price with where you buy or rent it.

"Unlimited" for a monthly fee programs like Netflix will have only those titles that content owners are willing to license on those terms. Most big media conglomerates strongly prefer pay-per-view business models.

End user "ownership" which is still really a limited use license, comes at a higher price than rental. But those prices are all over the place, from $20-30 for a hundred title collection, through $2-5 in the bargain bins up to the $15-20 or more for a theatrical blockbuster early release to Blu-Ray.

Check Amazon also, they are in the rental as well as sales business, on terms similar to Apple's.

[jcthorne]

We use a Tivo to record movies and tv shows. Transfer them to pc and to our tablet. Nothing illegal required.

[strollin]

1775 wrote:
... there had been - and you should still be able to get from Samsung - an adapter to plug any USB device or memory into the tablet's input/output socket so you could use USB stick drives, etc. for your media. This greatly increases your tablets storage capacity for media and documents. You probably already know that apps won't run from the external SD card or on a USB stick with the adapter. ...

The adapter being referred to here is called an OTG (On The Go) cable. You can buy it from places other than Samsung, they'll charge an arm & a leg for it. The thing you need to watch out for is that Samsung uses a proprietary connector and not a micro USB like most other tablets.

Here's a listing of the cable on Amazon: OTG Cable for Samsung

[wa8yxm]

The problem with streaming movies over the web, or Television shows, is the bandwidth.. Most of the better video compression methods (If you want quality video) burn about a gig an hour.

I have seen some low-quality scemes at a quarter Gig and some very high higher (2 or more Gigs per hour)

So, if you are using park WI-Fi. you wont' be making friends, and if you are using your own cellular or satellite, you will quickly burn through your data alotment. Thus the best ways to view are this.

Rip a DVD or blue ray to hard drive and transfer to portable device
Record over the air (or cable or Sat) television with a DVR that can transfer to the portable device (My ReplayTVs do that, I have like 200 hours of movies stored on this comptuer can bel played on comp, tablet, android phone or streamed back to the Replays for viewing on the televisions).

[TomG2]

I looked at what Google has to offer and the idea of paying $4-$16 for a movie slowed my enthusiasm somewhat. Does anyone offer a "View it one time" or "View it for 48 hours" program? Something like renting from Red Box for instance. I must be missing something as I see others watching movies on their tablets and I doubt that they pay $12 for the privilege.

[Tom_M1]

VideoHelp.com is an excellent site for information and software for dealing with anything regarding video.

[1775]

Whichever way and whether it is legal or not legal to put a movie onto portable media, the Samsung Tab can use its own SD card which can be up to 32GB and I have heard of some using a 64GB card with success plus there had been - and you should still be able to get from Samsung - an adapter to plug any USB device or memory into the tablet's input/output socket so you could use USB stick drives, etc. for your media. This greatly increases your tablets storage capacity for media and documents. You probably already know that apps won't run from the external SD card or on a USB stick with the adapter.

Once you have your media accessible, you can use the included media player or there are a lot of other media players that play a larger variety of formats.

[1492]

NOTE: Please do not link to any ripping utility that includes the ability to circumvent Digital Rights Management(DRM) as forum Terms of Service(TOS) do not permit: "(iii) submit material that is unlawful....or encourages conduct that would be considered a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, violate any law, or is otherwise inappropriate;".

[1492]

The issue of whether it's legal to rip personally owned DVD movies is mired in more shades of grey than the novel.

Handbrake, an open source media conversion utility, apparently does not violate the DMCA as it's not able to circumvent CSS copy protection by default. The end user needs to manually install a separate .dll file to do so.

However, DVD Catalyst is apparently based on the open source Mencoder/MPlayer which utilizes the libdvdcss.dll library to decrypt DVDs allowing it to be ripped. It also appears that the open source libdvdcss.dll, which uses a list of player keys or brute force methods for authentication, has not been legally challenged, as it's commonly used in free media players. This in contrast to conversion utilities that use DeCSS, which uses a cracked player key, and technically illegal to manufacture or distribute.

However, may be a moot point as the DMCA considers it illegal to circumvent copy protection for purposes of copying content except for a few exempted purposes.

Adding to the confusion, the U.S. Copyright Office refused to exempt space shifting, converting copyrighted digital content to a different format, effectively making it illegal.

Some AV software, such as Bitdefender, auto blocks the current version of DVD Catalyst from running, without it being manually unblocked.

[TomG2]

Not interested in illegal copying. Not that I am that moral or rich, just lazy. I will check into digital movie downloads from Google.

[strollin]

I use this program to rip DVDs: DVD Catalyst

The author is very good at offering help when issues are encountered.

[Fizz]

TomG2 wrote:
Ok, I will give Handbrake a try. The only other question then is how it deals with copy protection on prerecorded movies. Or, is there a digital movie store where I can download them before transferring them to a SD card?

You have hit a dead end asking that question here.
It can be done but you will not get answers in this forum.

[strollin]

You can buy movies from Google Play and there is an option to download them to your device. I'm not sure however, if you can specify to download them to the SD card.