Innotab Kiddies tablet thingy

[TheHeretic]

My little bro has bought his 2 little daughters an Innotab each for Xmas... I was asked to set them up. I have never before been so infuriated with a device as these little bits of crap. The kids will love them. the games are decent enough, etc, but bugger me, adding music, audiobooks and movies to them is a right royal pain in the ahole. After 3 days I managed to add 3 Winnie the st stories to it, but it refuses to read any of my .mp3's, or the .avi movies, despite being in exactly the format, (very specific) that it asks for in the manual.

Anyone else used them, and have any tips?

http://www.vtechuk.com/InnoTab/

[slinky]

I have one ready for my 2yr old daughter... I must admit I've not tried putting anything on it just yet, so I'll be interested to see if this gets any other responses.. Sorry I can't be more help!

[TheHeretic]

One tip I can give, is that if you have a NetBoot, the software for it is nigh on useless. The window it uses is a set size, and my brothers NetBoot screen was slightly smaller than the window size, with no way to scroll the window. Could not get to the options at the bottom of the window!

Bloody annoying.

[LocoBlade]

Funnily enough I'm setting up one for my daughter this evening and also swearing at its clunkiness to configure and populate. The main thing I'm trying to do at te mo is get some videos on there, what software are you using to encode mjpeg? Haven't got onto mp3 yet but I have read that the only way it will recognise themis if loaded through the software, so if you're dragging and dropping straight onto the SD card that may explain your woes.

[TheHeretic]

LocoBlade said:

Funnily enough I'm setting up one for my daughter this evening and also swearing at its clunkiness to configure and populate. The main thing I'm trying to do at te mo is get some videos on there, what software are you using to encode mjpeg? Haven't got onto mp3 yet but I have read that the only way it will recognise themis if loaded through the software, so if you're dragging and dropping straight onto the SD card that may explain your woes.

I'm using ffmpeg to transcode the video to the standards in the booklet. Used the software to transfer everything. I've given up. I spent 3 days swearing, and gave it back to them. I'm only asking so I can pass on info. My sis in the US also has the same devices.

[LocoBlade]

Cheers, will have a look at that, encoder. FWIW I just ripped a kids music cd using iTunes into mp3 format then copied them to the device through the pc software and they seem to play ok.

[TheHeretic]

LocoBlade said:

Cheers, will have a look at that, encoder. FWIW I just ripped a kids music cd using iTunes into mp3 format then copied them to the device through the pc software and they seem to play ok.

I got Winnie the pooh to work, but not a single other .mp3 worked. I was transferring using the file manager on the side. I would browse to the music files, but it would not permit me to actually click any of them. They were all greyed out. These were not DRM'd, or anything like that. Varying durations, etc.

[LocoBlade]

Odd, it does seem quite picky doesn't it.

I've now managed to encode a few previously MP4 videos into watchable AVI mjpeg format using WinFF, setting to MS compatible AVI output with 480 x 272 resolution and an additional "-c:v mjpeg" command in the FFmpeg settings.