Need some information about the Advent Vega

[Guest Rossuk]

Hello,

I've been wanting an internet tablet ever since they started to come out. I basically need a portable media device which is fast and easy to use, mainly for internet browsing, listening to music and most importantly watching films & TV shows. And I've had my eye on the Advent Vega mainly due to the price and ability to customise it with the ROMS. I don't want to spend alot of money as I've just spent £700 on a i5 2500k gaming computer so my budget is a little tight. But before I spend more money I would like to know:

1. What devices can I connect to the Vega? Is it possible to plug my 2TB Seagate HDD to the vega and play video/audio files directly of it aswell as transferring files to the Vega?

2. Is the screen good enough to watch high quality films? Most of the video files I have are standard DVD quality but alot are 720p and 1080p quality too

3. Does anyone know a cheap portable memory device to carry around and use with the Vega (when I travel on the train or something I need a device to store video files as the Vega only has a small amount of memory)

4. Can I connect my Nokia 5800 Music phone to the Vega via USB and bluetooth?

5. Will I be able to install programes on the Vega like Utorrent/winamp/VLC and will they work properly?

Sorry for the amount of questions but I always do extensive research before I purchase any new piece of technology!

Thanks!

Edited March 9, 2011 by Rossuk

[Guest Vansphone]

Hello,

I've been wanting an internet tablet ever since they started to come out. I basically need a portable media device which is fast and easy to use, mainly for internet browsing, listening to music and most importantly watching films & TV shows. And I've had my eye on the Advent Vega mainly due to the price and ability to customise it with the ROMS. I don't want to spend alot of money as I've just spent £700 on a i5 2500k gaming computer so my budget is a little tight. But before I spend more money I would like to know:

1. What devices can I connect to the Vega? Is it possible to plug my 2TB Seagate HDD to the vega and play video/audio files directly of it aswell as transferring files to the Vega?

2. Is the screen good enough to watch high quality films? Most of the video files I have are standard DVD quality but alot are 720p and 1080p quality too

3. Does anyone know a cheap portable memory device to carry around and use with the Vega (when I travel on the train or something I need a device to store video files as the Vega only has a small amount of memory)

4. Can I connect my Nokia 5800 Music phone to the Vega via USB and bluetooth?

5. Will I be able to install programes on the Vega like Utorrent/winamp/VLC and will they work properly?

Sorry for the amount of questions but I always do extensive research before I purchase any new piece of technology!

Thanks!

I am a very new Vega owner so others will be be able offer better advice. But these are my thoughts. Assuming you use the R8 mod available on this site:

1. Yes, providing the 2 TB has a separate power supply and you put the Vega into USB host mode. I know others have used portable external hard drives without secondary power, but none of mine work unless I provide extra power

2. Yes, I think so, there may be some threads on this issue.

3. You can replace the original SD card with a 16 or 32 GB micro SD card. I buy them from Play.com I think a 16GB micro sd card is about £16 or so. If you want more memory Amazon are selling £32GB USB sticks for £25 upwards.

4. Others will offer better advice but I think I read a thread on a similar topic

5. Sorry I have no idea.

Edited March 9, 2011 by Vansphone

[Guest stevesilk51]

Question 5 - - Yes to winamp and you can sync from PC wirelessly to put songs on Vega

Not sure about VLC but mVideoPlayer works great

Utorrent - unsure

[Guest trevor432990]

Hi Ross .... we have had so many people who are considering the purchase of a Vega dropping by and asking similar questions to yourself that I created this topic which has links to those plus other useful information. If you can spend a bit more of your research time going through those posts and if there are still outstanding questions once you've done that feel free to come back and ask us again. :(

[Guest Robert Niel]

1. You'll probably find the following thread of use - it's a discussion of currently working devices when the Vega is switched to use USB Host mode. Note, that the standard Vega Kernel doesn't support NTFS but as long as you're hard drive is FAT32 formated then it should work. There is some work being done to overcome that issue though.

2. Screen quality is very subjective - though I think it could be better (especially viewing angles) it's certainly very usable for watching videos. Because of the different encoding levels and codecs, there can be a certain amount of trial and error required, experimenting with different video apps. But I've found that arcMedia (which is available through the Android market place for free) works well for me. But I'm sure everyone has their personal favourite. :( The screen resolution on the Vega is 1024 x 600, so 'hd' files will naturally end up being re-sampled. The Tegra 2 SOC cannot play back H.264 high profile files but otherwise everything else is subject to the particular data transfer rate (of the device you're streaming from) to provide a smooth viewing experience.

3. As Vansphone mentioned, the first step is to switch the supplied 4GB microSD card for one of a larger capacity. 32GB ones are a bit too expensive, so 16GB cards are the most cost effective. Beyond that then one or more USB flash drives are probably the most flexible option - they're light, compact and relatively inexpensive. Also easy to swap between multiple devices for the purpose of sharing/copying. I use DropBox to transfer files when I don't wish to directly connect devices.

4. I don't have any direct experience of the Nokia 5800, so I will just say that any device that presents itself as additional storage when plugged into a computer should work when the Vega is set to USB host. I tried a Sony mp3 player and was able to browse and play the music off it using iFileManager (- the in-built Vega file browser). Bluetooth, again I won't directly comment on except to say that not all Bluetooth devices are able to do file transfer even though they might be able to be paired.

5. If the application is available for Android, then yes naturally you'll be able to install it on the Vega. Obviously there might be a difference in functionality on different platforms (for example compared to the Windows version). WinAmp is still in beta on Android. Most apps do work on the Vega in my experience. Sometimes not full screen. Games are the most problematic because they tend to push the hardware in different and sometimes unexpected ways, especially graphically and those which use the accelerometer. VLC player (Android version) is still being worked on. There are other alternatives.

I don't think UTorrent is available for Android, but you do have the likes of tTorrent Lite and aDownloader BitTorrent clients. Also, there is UTorrent remote on Android for controlling UTorrent downloads started on other systems ( - add, remove, start and stop torrents) and once downloaded these files can then be transferred.

Robert

Edited March 9, 2011 by Robert Niel