Archos 70, iplayer and sky go help!

[brookington]

Hi all, very new to the world of tablets and forums and if this hs already been asked then i apologise in advance. I have an Archos 70 and would like to be able to play downloaded iplayer files on it to take my mind off the journey to work. If possible i would also like to play downloaded programmes from Sky go. Is this possible? What software would i need? Have i brought the wrong tablet?

Any advice is much appreciated.

 

[yann2]

You would need a media player capable of handling the usual format for iPlayer files. Are yours .mp4? or .flv?

I would suggest you get ES File Explorer, a great and free filemanager app from the Android Market. Besides the file manager, it contains a good text editor and a media player.

Not sue if you have the Android Market in your tablet yet? Archos sometimes doesn't include Google Apps in their firmware. If that's the case, see 'Arctools' website here, and find it in the Archos AppsLib store.

ArcTools will install a full Google apps suite for you, giving a working Android Market which is essential for anyone with Android devices. Cheers.

 

[brookington]

Hi yann2

Thanks for the reply. I have downloaded the WMV file for portable devices from the BBC iplayer website to my PC then copied the file over to the archos. i have tried playing the file using the built in player and also MX video player and all i get is pixelated picture and no sound. I have managed to get android market onto the archos and will take a look for ES file manager.

 

[yann2]

hi, brookington,

WMV is a windows Video format - you will get better results with .mp4 video; the quality is probably MUCH better too (I wouldn't know for sure, never got the WMV version, only .mp4).

If you are on iPlayer, try getting the 350 MB size version, that should be more than adequate for portable use. Or even one a bit smaller.

 

[gurgle]

One of the smarter things to do if you have iPlayer is begin to wean yourself from WMV format and move to the MP4 and associated codec. This is far more portable for non-PCs and achieves the same quality as a WMV format. If you have existing WMV files, I would suggest converting them to MP4 using one of the many video converters. I use Handbrake for my Archos 101 and ASUS TF101 with great success. That is not to say this is the only product. There are others as well.

 

[yann2]

+1 for mp4 - iPlayer mp4 streams use H.264 video codec, it's so much nicer than the common Xvid. Audio on them is AAC, which is also superior to .mp3.