[Carcharius]

Hi all,

We're off on some fairly long drives in a couple of weeks and I want something to keep the kids entertained on the journey. The plan is to have a USB hard drive attached to a HooToo TripMate Nano travel router and then have a tablet, running Kodi, use that as a media source. The tablet will then be mounted between the front seats so my two boys can both view it.

I was planning to use the Hudl 2 tablet that I already have, but I'm concerned that the screen might be too small. Especially if showing a 2.35:1 ratio movie for example.

So, I'm after a fairly cheap tablet with a 10+ inch screen that will run Kodi and happily playback a mixture of HD and SD files. Most likely the files will be x264 but there could be some mpeg2 as well (that I've ripped from DVD and not re-encoded yet).

One tablet that I've been looking at is https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tablet-Google-A...B01BNV5U6S which has only 1GB of RAM but does have HDMI output which might be useful when we get to where we are staying.

Another is https://www.amazon.co.uk/PolaTab-Q10-3-I...B00TX8U0NC which has 2GB of RAM but no HDMI.

Yet another is https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dragon-Touch-Lo...B018AAL1PY another with HDMI but only 1GB of RAM

Other than the RAM and HDMI these tablets seem pretty much identical - with the Dragon Touch having a slightly different case layout.

However I don't know how well they'll run Kodi. I know they are using Allwinner chipsets and that Kodi has had (continues to have?) issues with hardware acceleration on those types of processors. But I don't know if that is still the case.

I'm also not sure how much RAM is really required - obviously more is better, but will 1GB do the job?

What I do like about both of those is the 1366x768 screen resolution. With the 16:9 ratio being a closer match to the media that is going to be played so less screen wastage (for want of a better term).


Does anybody have any input on those tablets? Or can anyone recommend an alternative - that is available fairly speedily in the UK?

Thanks

[Ned Scott]

I'm not sure how prices are in the UK, but in the US Amazon's own Fire tablet line is probably the best value for quality tablets (good battery life, screen, etc), at least on the low-end. Kodi can be easily installed from the included Silk browser and shows up as a normal app.

[Carcharius]

Thanks Ned, I did have a look at the Fire tablets. But the 10 inch version is in the region of double the price of those others I was looking at.

I don't really use a tablet enough to justify spending that much. For the moment it just needs to be basically a dumb screen, displaying Kodi which will be controlled remotely from a phone in the front of the car.

As the boys get older (they're only 2 1/2) I'm sure I'll migrate to them having a tablet each etc.

[Topken]

I personally have no problems running Kodi on my Kindle Fire HDX 8.9" (2013) which has a qualcomm S800 CPU. Meaning see if you can snatch an older tablet for the price point you are looking at.

[Atreyu]

I use a Asus model (asus M301T I believe, cant check now) that should be at a low price right now since its a bit older.
What I like about it is its Hdmi out, stereo speakers (which was quite the thing at the time) and very good battery life.
Has only 1gb but has served me really well while on the road..

/edit oef! Just saw this, price hasn't dropped that much:
https://www.amazon.com/MeMO-Pad-Smart-ME...B00BCPIFC2
or this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004U78J1...B00BCPIFC2
Practically the same hardware

[Carcharius]

Thanks, but looking at those, they both seem to be early generation Tegra chipsets. I didn't think Kodi supported less than Tegra 3?

Looking at the Amazon reviews for the tablets I linked to, there are people reporting running Kodi on them. No great detail though.

[Atreyu]

Kodi runs just fine on these. Like i said it works great for me.
The only limitation i can think of is on stock firmware, which is 4.x, you cannot run Krypton.
You will have to replace the rom with a community 5.x for that. But Jarvis is fine as it is.

Anyway, just a suggestion.

[Carcharius]

Further to my original question, does anybody have experience of running Kodi on Android with a MediaTek chipset?

In my hunt for a tablet I've seen several that are based on an MT8163 - how would Kodi fare on one of those?