Help Zenithink ZT-180 - Unable to play movies from SD Card

[malooki]

Arrrrrggggghhhhh Help!.

Im hoping someone here can help with the problem im having with playing movies direct from the micro sd card. Exact same movies will play form a usb pen although its very choppy and not watchable.

When trying to run the movies from the sd card it will either throw a force close message, do nothing and hang or will go blank for a period of time before returning to the folder where the movies are.

Any help is much appreciated

827 firmware is installed by the way.

Sorry Guys I've put this under the wrong FORUM BOARD, am not sure how to move it

 

[Steven58]

Welcome. I moved this for you. Pm me if I got the wrong section. I guessed never having heard of this before!

 

[Martimus]

What brand/type of SD card are you using? It's possible that the SD card is simply not able to keep up. It's also possible that the firmware image on the ZT-180 isn't doing too well with that particular app. Did you flash that image onto your ZT-180 or did it come with it already installed? Questions... questions... questions...

 

[malooki]

Thanks for replying Martimus, The pad came with the 827 update firmware already installed.

The build shows 826 but i understand from other threads that i have read that this is to do when the update was actually released but is infact the 827.

The micro sd card is a 16GB Kingston. The packaging is all in chinese. The pad and microsd card where all purchased from thecheaplaptops.co.uk

Whats even more worrying is that when it hangs and the unit restarts itself any movies that where on the sd card are erased. Lots of cache tmp files have appears on the sd card itself.

 

[Martimus]

First off, try a different SD card! If you got the 16gb Kingston with the tablet I'd be surprised if the card is, in fact, a Kingston. It could very well be a Chinese knock-off made with inferior parts.

If a known good SD card doesn't help then it might be worthwhile trying to flash a new image onto the ZT-180. If a newer image is available this might help improve the stability of the tablet.

The unfortunate reality with these Chinese tablets is that they were designed and built quickly and with little quality control. As such they are temperamental and quirky little devices...

 

[malooki]

Thanks Martimus,

I had a spare 2GB Sandisk SDHC micro sd card. That seems to work flawlessly with the exception of the encoding of my divx and xvid movies. Im finding that I have to convert them to MP4 H264 but hey if they play im fine with that.

I purchased this for my disabled son who spends most of his life in hospital so the movie aspect of this device was of particular interest.

I have emailed the company we purchased the card and pad from, Foolishly i didnt check to see if they had a phone number before ordering (something i normally look out for) so have to communicate by email.

Looking at their returns policy im not sure if this is going to be as easy as i hoped. We will see how it goes.

Dont suppose you know what the ideal encoding format is for this device?

 

[spamface]

Hi, have you tried playing the movies on the sd card on a pc (reading directly from the card)? The sad fact is many 16 & most 32gb sd micro cards are fake. They only hold say 2gb & corrupt the rest. Try testing the card using a program called h2testw - the only sure way to know. Good luck.

 

[malooki]

Hey Spamface,

I had narrowed the problem down to the sd card, I was amazed by the response i got from the company i purchased the tablet and card from. They knowingly gave me a card from their faulty stock. I was offered an 8GB card in its place with a

 

[spamface]

That's great that you got a refund. It's not unknown for some companies to knowing sell dodgy cards. Then again it's common for honest traders to pick up a batch of fake cards too. H2testw will likely take several hours to test a 16gb card. It'll probably report something like 2gb verified and 14gb corrupted.
There are programs available to re-flash the card back to its real (2gb) value which might make it useful but these are often cards which have failed quality control anyway so you might not wish to trust any data to it.
Main thing is the ZT180 should be as reliable as any other, which isn't great but ain't too bad either! Hope your son has fun with it, there's a lot of potential.