OFF: Music player advice, Return of...

[Mike Holmes]

On 29/07/2013 20:12, Keith Henderson wrote:
> Hey Folks...

Hey, I can answer some of this. I broke my Galazy tab 7 inch (version 1) 
and borrowed a Galaxy Tab 7 inch (version 3) while I was fixing it.


> So now I'm looking at the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0, which is being offered for $200.  It's only 8 GB internal
> storage, but has a SD-micro drive that can offer a lot more effective storage.  And here's the rub....Wikipedia
> and Amazon insist that it takes a 64 GB micro SD card, but Samsung's own specs page (including the official PDF
> manual) for the device insists its compatible only with a 32GB card.  What's the deal here?  How can it be both?

I used a 32Gb card with both. Never tried a 64Gb.

> Or what could cause the discrepancy?  This is rather important of course.  I gather it's a software thing, the
> card is the same size after all.  I need to figure this out before I order/buy one.

Yes, it will be a hardware or software constraint on the tab side.

> Like the Nexus7, it seems to dock landscape-style, and the docks are ridiculously cheap (like $3) - how can
> that be?

Mass manufacturing? The thing that annoyed me about version 3 was that 
it didn't have an HDMI output on the dock such as version 1 did. It's 
basically why I repaired the version 1 screen rather than move to the 
new version. It won't affect the music side of things though.

> I would of course have to spend $50 on a 64GB SD card, and then also get some kind of USB adapter (they
> seem cheap too...less than $10).

I'd have thought so. I bought a few for bedroom/office/car so that I 
don't have to carry them around much.

> SD chips I think of a camera battery cards, and I've only ever used them in a
> "one-way reader", but I imagine that the new adapters are two-way things that allow for writing onto the card,

Connect your tab to a 'puter via USD and you can read/write as if it's 
an external drive. The SD card shows as a separate external drive to the 
tab main memory. Samsung has a special proggy called Kies to do all 
this, but I find it twiddly and annoying and just use the Win 7 interface.

> which is of course what I'll need to do.  Plus, I have to figure out how to get the formatting right (FAT instead
> of, what is it...NFTC or something?).

NTFS? If you just copy the files over to the SD card, the system will 
take care of all that.

> The manual also suggests it is compatible with AAC (MP4) audio, but then
> it says it depends on the op software, which is Android "4.1.2 Jelly Bean."  Anybody know if that is indeed the
> case?

I believe that even on the version 1 tab that I've been playing MP4 
movies. Does that mean that MP4 audio works? I know that it's fairly 
fussy about movie formats though and I have to get the settings dead 
right when copying them onto the tab.

> So, I'm leaning towards this device at the moment, unless someone tells me that it would be a disaster for any
> reason.

I like both Galaxy tabs, though my uses for the device possibly differ 
from yours:

* Reading the web on the move.
* Downloading web pages to read when I'm not able to get to the 
interwebs (using Pocket).
* Listening to those web pages while walking using bluetooth headphones 
and the text-to-speech widget.
* Getting stock prices.
* Getting the weather.
* Linking to hotel TVs to watch movies while travelling.
* Watching movies on the train
* Playing Backgammon/Scrabble/Go
* Downloading PDFs to read
* Reading e-books
* Monitoring my sleep patterns
* Making phone calls
* Sending text messages
* Updating my office diary
* Reading/sending emails

Oh yeah and:

* Listening to music through headphones or hifi.

To be honest, I wonder how I ever lived without it.

>  (The HP Slate 7 is also on sale here, but it seems definitely limited to 32 GB cards, so I want to hold out
> for the true 64 GB capability.)

If the tab is going to stay in the house, the music doesn't actually 
have to be on the tab. It could be on another device in the house which 
is accessed by wifi through the tab and then send through the hifi.

> The wifi aspect I need to figure out at some point, but I am so ignorant about what to do/how it works, that I'll
> hold off on that at the moment.  It looks like a router is in the $50-$80 range...is that all I need?

Pretty much. Plus a phone line of course if you want to reach out to 
that interweb thing.

> The fact that
> a tablet (and our TV and my Mom's Kindle) has internal wifi capability just means that it will pick up signals either
> near of far of a certain strength.

Yup. Placement of the router is important. Mine is too far from the TV 
to be useful and so I have another pair of widgets which send the wifi 
through the electricity lines to the TV (bit of handwaving here but 
that's what it amounts to).

> I need the home router to put my external drive(s) on this desktop computer into
> use elsewhere in the house obviously...don't know how simple (and troublefree) that is until I try it.

I'd look at connecting the 'puter to the router via an ethernet cable 
(better connectivity).

> Anyway, it looks like I can get it done for the less-than-$400 I was budgeting for the project....that's good news.

Stuff like this is getting much cheaper. The Chromecast device:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromecast/#netflix

is going to be 35 Dollars. The idea there is that the music and video is 
on the web and the phone/tab is used via wifi simply to tell the 
Chromecast where to get a signal from on the web. Once that's done, the 
phone/tab can be used for other things until it's time to change 
movie/track.

This one is so far limited as to source. It still looks like a winner 
because it's easy though (it'll plug into a TV HDMI socket and take 
power from the mains, or a USB socket on the TV). That means that other 
companies will bring out improved versions and pretty wuickly folks will 
be able to access their own movie/music collections whether they're 
stored on the web, or on the computer in the bedroom.

FoFP

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