Help me keep my 10" Win 8.1 Tablet


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I bought 10.1" Windows 8.1 tablet because I thought it would be great as a media player for my son while we are traveling.

Now I realized, there is not a single %100 universal video player that can playback all sort of formats in a touch friendly environment.

 

Do you have any suggestions? I tried VLC, it doesn't show thumbnails and it doesn't have very user friendly controls for a kindergartener.

I tried Xbox video player, it doesn't support most formats. I tried other video players in app store, they are all limited.

 

 

Is there something I am missing or isn't there any good touch friendly players out there?

 

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Have you tried Kodi? I use it on my Mac Mini and it works fine. Maybe you should give it a try. http://kodi.tv/download/

 

Thank you, yes, that was one of the first things I tried, it's nice but it's acting up for me, the sidebar keeps flashing for a second or so thinking I hit right-click, and it also doesn't work well because the kodi skins do not expect %100 touch input, so you cannot scroll up and down unless you tap on that tiny scroll bar. Otherwise, Kodi's Influence skin has been the best among all players so far, especially with Back and Home buttons on screen. I tried other skins, I got stuck and had to reset them because they didn't have Back or Home buttons.

 

Otherwise, I love this tablet, it's light years ahead of any Android or iOS tablet and the file format compatibility (at least at core OS level) cannot be beaten by anything else. So if you found a way to navigate through Kodi with a fully touch supported (including scrolling through videos/movies easily) please share.

 

If I knew how to program for Windows Metro interface, I'd just make a very simple video player that shows thumbnails of each video and just plays when I hit it with a simple play status bar.

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while XBMC/KODI doesn't hav an officiel xbox app yet, plex does.  There's also lots of other players if you search on the store, like MX player. Also while I'm not a huge fan of VLC for touch it's a pretty good player and should display thumbs. 

 

And I'm not sure what you expect of navigation, but you won't find many players with better controls for small kids. They usually figure that stuff out pretty darn quick anyway though. 

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while XBMC/KODI doesn't hav an officiel xbox app yet, plex does.  There's also lots of other players if you search on the store, like MX player. Also while I'm not a huge fan of VLC for touch it's a pretty good player and should display thumbs. 

 

And I'm not sure what you expect of navigation, but you won't find many players with better controls for small kids. They usually figure that stuff out pretty darn quick anyway though. 

 

Thanks, I'll check Plex, I thought Plex required a server to run for streaming, can it act as standole player?

MX player is very glitchy and they want money for every single individual function. VLC is nice but I don't see thumbnails for some reason, it could be the format, most of them are in .flv, .mp4 and a few mkv's. One thing I love about Windows environment is that there is no such a thing as "not supported" you can always find a way to play/open files, unlike Android, good luck playing flash videos or certain codecs.

 

Return it and get an Android tablet. They make ones built just for kids.

 

http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/305700/the-top-tablets-for-your-kids

Thanks, but that's not an option I am considering, as title suggests, I just wanted some help to keep my Windows tablet, yes returning it is the easy way, but I prefer windows and want to utilize it. I already have an android tablet (sadly without MicroSD slot and only 8GB storage, useless) and Kindle Fire (for him to watch Amazon Prime Unlimited videos, even on the go with offline mode, again no MircoSD slot) and Blackberry Playbook (I used and handed down to him, he keeps it as family photo/video album and up until YT dropped support back in April, as touch friendly, kid-safe, Advertisement-Free Youtube Device, YT caught up and cancelled the integration when they realized their official app was ad-free).

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A handy list of free desktop video players at:

 

http://codecpack.co/

 

(scroll down on the right hand side list)

 

It has a lot of obscure players that came and went so to speak and a lot of players have skins.

 

So my idea is that some skins are designed for accessability with large controls and combining that with the Windows 8.1 Accessibility control panel you might be able to tweak a touch friendly desktop player

 

The problem with WIndows Store apps is that they don't have access to the normal Windows API and Codecs for sandbox security reasons and are depedent on the built-in player support in the WinRT API or else they have to package their own internal codec support.

 

This situation will change with Windows 10 which relaxes a lot of restrictions and adds lots of media support so if you can hang in until the 10 upgrade on July 29 it might work out for you and your son.

 

If you could detail a very specific set of minimum requirements, I might be able to make an Win Store App for you...

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A handy list of free desktop video players at:

 

http://codecpack.co/

 

(scroll down on the right hand side list)

 

It has a lot of obscure players that came and went so to speak and a lot of players have skins.

 

So my idea is that some skins are designed for accessability with large controls and combining that with the Windows 8.1 Accessibility control panel you might be able to tweak a touch friendly desktop player

 

The problem with WIndows Store apps is that they don't have access to the normal Windows API and Codecs for sandbox security reasons and are depedent on the built-in player support in the WinRT API or else they have to package their own internal codec support.

 

This situation will change with Windows 10 which relaxes a lot of restrictions and adds lots of media support so if you can hang in until the 10 upgrade on July 29 it might work out for you and your son.

 

If you could detail a very specific set of minimum requirements, I might be able to make an Win Store App for you...

 

 

Thank you very much, I didn't mean to ask anyone to sit and design an app for me but it's nice of you to offer. It's just a basic video player which lists all videos with folders and videos show up in square thumbnails, you hit it and it plays them back with simple pause/next/previous buttons and seek bar to jump to a spot. A minimize button that takes you back to list, (or a stop button that does the same thing). That's all, really.  Volume slider is optional.

 

I'll check those applications you linked, but to be honest, even windows media player (with correct codecs) or even VLC (desktop mode, not metro) works perfectly fine, as long as you don't mind using small buttons and navigate via Windows Explorer with large thumbnail mode.

 

You mentioned accessibility, how do you make desktop icons larger on 8.1 tablet? Is there a hidden menu somewhere to access legacy options?  I remember there was sSomething like power admin tools or advanced control panel?

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In this other thread, a member mentioned an app: TubeCast:

https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1260758-did-anyone-try-running-android-on-their-windows-tablet/#entry596894374

This is really nice app and I can't help but think, why couldn't developer make something like this, except for offline/local video playback? I mean imagine how could it would be to have universal interface for videos from different sources?

 

Yes, we can do that with Kodi, but once again it's going back to convenience and usability, things like not being able to tap and scroll on a scrollable screen, because our lovely Windows expects a mouse input not touch input. If we had a way to trick Windows (like two finger scroll) to emulate scroll-wheel, I think we would have a chance to save it.

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Thank you very much, I didn't mean to ask anyone to sit and design an app for me but it's nice of you to offer. It's just a basic video player which lists all videos with folders and videos show up in square thumbnails, you hit it and it plays them back with simple pause/next/previous buttons and seek bar to jump to a spot. A minimize button that takes you back to list, (or a stop button that does the same thing). That's all, really.  Volume slider is optional.

 

I'll check those applications you linked, but to be honest, even windows media player (with correct codecs) or even VLC (desktop mode, not metro) works perfectly fine, as long as you don't mind using small buttons and navigate via Windows Explorer with large thumbnail mode.

 

You mentioned accessibility, how do you make desktop icons larger on 8.1 tablet? Is there a hidden menu somewhere to access legacy options?  I remember there was sSomething like power admin tools or advanced control panel?

 

I find the problem interesting because something seemingly so simple never seems to get solved to everyone's satisfaction.

 

On the desktop side, some of the desktop media players have hundreds of skins for their players, some of which have huge buttons.

 

On the App side, there is a large number of crappy apps in the store but did you try them all in case one fits your specific case? Note that for Store Apps, you want to place your videos in the Video directory which any app can access without special permission.

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Tubecast:

 

http://www.windowscentral.com/tubecast-windows-81-youtube-app

 

 

Windows 10 is the plan to save it. To get the entire ecosystem unfragmented on 10 ASAP.

 

So you could always upgrade your tablet to 10 and see if you discover anything worth reporting back to us!

Thanks for the link, it says

"When you swipe towards the right, you can see the three other sections of the app: popular videos, browse by categories, and offline videos. It might be confusing to some users because even though you are swiping left and right, the labels for theses sections go up and down."

But that doesn't seem to work anymore, either tubecast removed the offline/local video playback from features, or it's part of the premium software now, I don't see it listed anywhere. If it did, that would be really amazing.

 

My tablet is UnBranded 10.1" and it is not giving me an option to update or sign up for updates, I suspect there are no drivers available for it, hence lack of Win 10 notification. I wouldn't want to risk bricking it, especially with no recovery media available for me to restore.

 

I find the problem interesting because something seemingly so simple never seems to get solved to everyone's satisfaction.

 

On the desktop side, some of the desktop media players have hundreds of skins for their players, some of which have huge buttons.

 

On the App side, there is a large number of crappy apps in the store but did you try them all in case one fits your specific case? Note that for Store Apps, you want to place your videos in the Video directory which any app can access without special permission.

 

It's really interesting. I tested top 20 results in "Video Player" search results, and in deed most of the results are pure crap, don't even go beyond 20 because it turns into circus after that. There are few duplicates, just clones of each other. It seems like there are two main app developers that kept submitting the same app over and over with a different skin. This media player does not let you watch anything other than wmv, and asks you to purchase modules for each video format, it's pretty bad. You never know what they'll ask next, probably enable "Next" button? Then there are at least 5 players (clone of each other from same developer) just simple video player with a big banner, you can't get rid of unless you pay.

 

 

I am not even going to go into supported formats. %90 of these do not support one format that other does. I kept 4 files, wmv, mkv, flv and mp4, most of them don't recognize MKV or FLV some do just WMV some of them just .mp4.

 

I tried  VLC once again, it's actually better when I keep everything in videos folder, but it's strange, when I check "Videos" Tab, I only see FLV and MP4 listed in the thumbnail view, but when I go back to Home, in  "Top Videos" I see all 3, including MKV. I wonder why videos tab is excluding the mkv. Edit: Just noticed, the sample bunny MKV I downloaded was somehow classified under "Shows" as Season 0 Episode 72, weird..

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It's a convoluted way maybe but they have Modern apps to remotely log into a XBMC/Kodi setup.

So if you install Kodi and then the modern app through the store, can't you use that app to access Kodi but optimized for touch?

Just a thought

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It's a convoluted way maybe but they have Modern apps to remotely log into a XBMC/Kodi setup.

So if you install Kodi and then the modern app through the store, can't you use that app to access Kodi but optimized for touch?

Just a thought

The apps I saw on Marketplace were mostly remote controllers (Remove via Wifi/BT) to control XBMC on another display. They don't actually playback the media in those apps.

 

However, I found that with TouchMe Gesture Engine and Gesture Studio, I may be able to emulate mouse wheel scroll by modifying "two finger" keyboard gesture. I'll be testing that in Kodi tomorrow. I don't understand why wouldn't MS include something like this in a tablet device. If not, I'll go with VLC for the time being, at least I can also enable Kiosk mode and use VLC in locked environment.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just install cccp codecs and you can even use windows mediaplayer with all filetypes;)

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Just install cccp codecs and you can even use windows mediaplayer with all filetypes;)

My problem is not the codecs, It is the way to play them conveniently.  Despite being "touch" device, it is not very touch friendly.

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Install Plex Server on the tablet then use the Plex Windows Store App, it should link to the installed server and it will automatically transcode as needed (mp4 generally works as is though) and you can set it to cache the transcodes to prevent it doing it again.

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Thank you, yes, that was one of the first things I tried, it's nice but it's acting up for me, the sidebar keeps flashing for a second or so thinking I hit right-click, and it also doesn't work well because the kodi skins do not expect %100 touch input, so you cannot scroll up and down unless you tap on that tiny scroll bar. Otherwise, Kodi's Influence skin has been the best among all players so far, especially with Back and Home buttons on screen. I tried other skins, I got stuck and had to reset them because they didn't have Back or Home buttons.

 

Otherwise, I love this tablet, it's light years ahead of any Android or iOS tablet and the file format compatibility (at least at core OS level) cannot be beaten by anything else. So if you found a way to navigate through Kodi with a fully touch supported (including scrolling through videos/movies easily) please share.

 

If I knew how to program for Windows Metro interface, I'd just make a very simple video player that shows thumbnails of each video and just plays when I hit it with a simple play status bar.

 

there is a skin designed for kodi to make it more touch friendly.

 

http://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:Re-Touched

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