Jimmie76

I currently use this Sumvision Cyclone Micro 4 Media Player for displaying video/photos on IFE screens and televisions that have no USB port/media player. It takes USB and Micro SD as well as Ethernet and wifi (although I've not tested that) Now whilst I do like it, it doesn't always spot the Micro SD, the USB is fine however. The other issue is it runs hotter than Hades and I swear is cooking anything I put in, the metal USB sticks are very hot when removed. That's hardly surprising though as it's a small box and a lot of electronics.

Therefore I was thinking of a replacement and was wondering if anyone had any experience/recommendations? Ideally I'd love it if it could handle all the things the current one can including RCA and HDMI and not be a too big box. Just without the memory sticks feeling like Death Valley on a warm day that would be great. If it's needing to be shipped to the US as opposed to the UK then that's fine as I will be there next month.

paperwastage

here's an idea:

I have a miracast (HDMI) receiver for my android phone. that receiver plugs into any HDMI TV, and mirrors my android phone through wifi

I can play anything on my phone as long as I have an app that can decode it (on storage, streaming from youtube/wifi, maybe USB/microSD if your phone supports OTG)

https://www.microsoft.com/accessorie...er-2/p3q-00001
still needs a USB connection for power, but it's small (and the power adapter can serve double-use to charge your phone)





if you need it to be separate (eg: you don't necessarily stay with the TV, it's for presenting stuff, can be operated by anyone), then this idea isn't that good.

Jimmie76

The unit I mentioned I have above does do miracast, although I've yet to use it on there. Partly because when I use an OTG cable even one with a separate power input and the wifi/Bluetooth off, it drains the battery on my tablet quite quickly.

Jimmie76

A decidedly non technological friend suggested a solution, use a USB extension cable. Brilliant idea - just cross I didn't think of it.

IsleOfMan

If you're really stuck on maintaining RCA composite video + analog audio output, your best bet is probably small boxes running Android (there are a handful with RCA in addition to HDMI). With that and your media player of choice (Kodi or similar for a nice 10 ft interface and metadata scraping, any one of a hundred others for basic media playback) should handle most of what you need, plus a casting receiver (I like AllCast Receiver) to allow you to cast from your phone/tablet if need be.

KRSW

Are there IFE systems which have passenger-accessible inputs? I've not come across any.

In every hotel I've stayed in the past 4 years has had TVs with HDMI inputs. There's a FireTV stick in my laptop bag which allows me to stream from my portable WiFi router or screen cast from my tablet & phone.

The FireTV stick has the advantage of a built-in web browser, which is good enough to log into hotel captive portal/login screens if need be. By using my own portable WiFi router, I just sign on once with my laptop or phone and all of my devices are automatically authenticated. Also saves me from having to manually pair each of my device's to each hotel's WiFi.

IsleOfMan

I agree with the above and carry a Fire TV Stick with me as well. I don't go as far as coupling it with a portable router and usually stick to streaming content when traveling, saving locally stored content on my phone/tablet/laptop for when captive on a plane. That said, if your hotel has wired ethernet in the room you can setup an ad-hoc wireless network with ICS on your laptop to the same end, though I'm seeing wired ethernet starting to disappear, especially in newer construction. All that said, though, if locally stored content is going to represent the vast majority of your viewing, a device that handles it better (like one of the many boxes running Android) would likely be a better choice, though they do have their caveats.

Jimmie76

The BA IFE in First Class has RCA Phono Sockets for displaying your own videos etc. (There is also a USB slot for viewing pictures) and that's where I intend to use this on planes. A few other airlines using Panasonic for IFE have the eXport In-Flight Video sockets (as well as composite RCA Phono) in some cabins which can be used with a 30pin iDevice to view content on the IFE screen. Does require a special cable with a proprietary plug to be able to do this though and to the best of my knowledge anything with a lightning connector won't work even with a 30pin adapter. I do not have any iDevices to test this though.

Jimmie76

I rarely stay in hotels although I do go to a few places where the broadband is fairly unreliable or non existent in one case. So I might get a FireTV stick shipped to ACK because they're relatively inexpensive (although the GBPound needs to recover a bit first ) but it won't help on board a plane where I really need it. I have however after the suggestion dug out a small USB extension cable and am using that with the existing media player which had prevented any more 'cooking'. I've got 2 128GB drives filled with TV shows and films and I'm filling a third as fast as my computer (dedicated one for this task) can convert DVD's to MP4.