Cheap windows Tablet is fantastic

[Barcrest]

Brought a cheap (£37.49) bush tablet yesterday from Argos clearance. Despite my initial disappointment at not being able to upgrade to windows 10 it is fantastic for running E-touch which is all I wanted it for.

Set up was easy, copy the setup.exe off my main pc via a network share, install and set the main app and config to admin mode under compatibility. Copied 3 albums to build the initial DB and then was able to search up online songs and play pretty much anything I wanted all night fed to a Bluetooth sound system. Why I waited so long to do this I don't know.

Ideally I would have gotten a beefier 10" tablet but this little 8" does the job fine. I really recommend it to anyone that doesn't want to have a permanent jukebox but something you can bring out at parties. It's even easier if your TV sound system is Bluetooth as there is very little outlay.

Also with E-touch set to dual screen (Even on the single screen tablet) you get crossfading for the tracks. Previously we were playing tracks off a phone (In the pub) using you tube to Bluetooth speakers and the fact you couldn't queue songs and had adverts was a bit pants, things just got a hell of a lot cooler.

[Mark Norville]

Running Windows 10 would have slowed the tablet down far too much. I did consider upgrading before the free offer ended, but decided not too. I can always download from torrents when I want to upgrade. Windows 10 is really over rated in my eyes, and the only way that I would have windows 10 would be for a touch screen gaming PC connected to xbox one. Apart from that I would not use it to surf the net or do anything like that.

I know that there are attempts of a PC android operating system, but they are not 100% yet and not official. If you want cool, have a look at http://voxcommando.com/home/ if you could make etouch work with that, voice command is even more cooler.

Or even a Kinect, I still need to get a power supply so that I can hook mine up to the computer.

P.S Stop spending time in the pub that is my job lol

[Barcrest]

My current focus is to enable online searching for chart entries you do not have, fixing up a couple of skin issues and specifying a download directory.

[Barcrest]

I think I might make a new skin to use all the tablet screen size. The current default skins are more than usable but it would make sense to try and make the buttons a little larger with the extra width. A portrait skin wouldn't be any use on such a small screen so i am not looking at doing that. I might look at basing something off the SxxLxxS skin for a tablet resolution.

Another thought was to specify what screen the LED scroller appears on and having that on the main screen at the bottom i am just playing around right now.

[Barcrest]

I have resized touchgeni for a tablet resolution of 1280 x 800. I need to upload this if anyone is interested.

[Mark Norville]

You are brave then touchgeni is far too cluttered and unusable even on a normal PC let alone a tablet. A skin for a tablet really needs to be as basic as you can get and stripped. You need to get rid of ratings, and a lot more really I just come back from the pub now and was looking at the jukebox for ideas, but people just want to play music.

A feature on the never ending jukeboxes was that the do you want to play this track pop up, in that pop up it gives you other songs that you might be interested in, however I think that as soon as you press yes the pop up disappears and then the recommend tracks disappear as well, which defeats the purpose really.

User ability not graphics is the key, although nice graphics is a bonus. You want an old man of 90 to be able to go to the jukebox and be able to play tracks who has never used a computer before.

The jukeboxes that I have seen are all portrait and massive really which does make skinning easier, but when you downsize or go landscape then it makes it slightly harder to skin for, especially with a lot of features.

Shall finish here as just back from the pub and beer fridge is calling.

[Barcrest]

E-touch offers you the same track by alternate artists when you pick a track to lay which is like that recommended thing.

[Mark Norville]

I know ya daft brummie I was talking about the jukebox at the pub, you select a song, it wants to know if you want to play the song, but then at the bottom, it says about alternative tracks, but as soon as you press yes to play the pop up goes away and so do the alternative tracks, however if I wanted that song on and then wanted to pick one of their suggestions it is too late.

It is a useless feature the way that they have done it, it means you have to remember what they have recommended to you and then find it afterwards. I know you cannot have a pop up box for half an hour but it is like having a womans cleavage on show, and then her mate gets hers out as well you press yes for the big saggy ones, and before you can select the young pert ones after, they have gone.

I am addicted to jukeboxes now, the one at my local is a case of you do a search say for the clash and it comes up with every song, rather than albums, I kind of like that in some respects, but if you have a lot of albums of one artist, then it can be too many tracks, especially if alphabetical.

Why I like the random feature on etouch really as I can find an album go to that, and then select songs, and random again. Sometimes I will queue the whole album such as with some of the Now albums, the earlier ones such as 12,43 rather than the crap music they have on nowadays.

The easier and less complicated the better really, I have stood at the jukebox in the pub, literally racking my brain for songs that I want to put on, but then I put some crap on, because I have forgotten the good stuff that I wanted on.

Still the pub is the best place for a jukebox it means that you listen to songs that you would not put on yourself, such as today with a bunch of Country bumpkins putting on fooking chas n dave and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aIMGVXzNbY rather than https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb63PdPweDc

Good crack at the pub, but sometimes the same music which I really hate lol

[Barcrest]

I got the tablet to use at the pub. My local is a real ale place and they don't have a jukebox. They do run Vinyl nights and occasionally have bands on but they don't have a jukebox. Just the radio or a CD for background music. The past 4 weeks or so I have been playing songs off you tube on my phone with 2 X-Mini speakers linked together on Thursday nights. This was ok but you would have to remember requests due to no queue on youtube, you would have to put up with adverts and there would be a gap between songs. This is why I brought the tablet, so we can now queue up songs and have them fade nicely between each other.

As for finding new songs have you tried the E-touch DJ feature? Play one song and it will pick related songs for the random play. This currently only works if you have those related songs in the jukebox. I am looking at adding the option for it just just download the related songs in the background (This will be handy for the tablet). The only issue with this is i need to slightly change how random works by downloading the next random song when one starts playing. Currently it selects the next song when it the old one ends or hits the cross fade time.

I assume your pub has a sound leisure venue hub? I hate those things. I think the suggestion thing you are seeing you are supposed to drag the tracks t your play list before selecting to play. It's not intuitive to be honest and all the ones I have seen also have a mouse pointer displayed. Their paging of the tracks is poor too you actually see the album covers load up then resize down when you page. Considering they must have a team of programmers there software has always seemed pretty poor. Until recently their search was just a jump to letter.

On a side note if you wanted to see all the tracks by artist you need to set up like theirs. 1 track per folder with it's own image. I you set E-tocuh like that it works the same, but it is only really good for small libraries.

[Mark Norville]

Probably a good pub but ouch no jukebox, bet that is expensive. If I was in that situation, to be honest I would do a play list, but then no matter of how many combinations you try and do then it would get boring after a while.

We have one guy that puts all Adele on, I've sat in a pub where one person has put about £2 in and played all of Queens album, and literally sat looking at the jukebox as it is a concert. As soon as I hear too much of the same music I try and switch it up, I usually put 80's on, but if it is an old mans pub then I always try and put a mixture of oldies and greats, so every one enjoys.

I have not tried the etouch DJ I thought that was more about cross fading, rather than anything else, to which I will have a look at some point, but I am a mood person, so a jukebox will never know what I am putting on, however say for example Youtube is good as if for example I put heavy metal on, it will follow that genre but then youtube usually has the music videos so they are the best tracks on the album, and the songs that you want to hear, which is why I always really struggle with having just music videos or the whole lot.

It is like the other day I was thinking about dual screens, I could put my spare TV on top of the jukebox, or a monitor, but what is the point really as depending upon your view you put music on and at the moment my cabinet is behind me, so I am playing music on my work PC but unless I have a long hdmi cable to connect to my main TV then I cannot really see music videos as they play anyway.

I have got a touch screen monitor on the wall, but not hooked up yet but I might look at that at some point, as I would love a cabinet to fit that so it just does not look like a monitor.

Yeah it is probably a sound leisure, they replaced the old one which was better, but this one goes off last fm so increased to a million tracks or something like that. It sounds good on paper but sometimes isn't.

[fatfoot123]

Hi BB
Would it not be time for an android app to connect to the existing jukebox via a tablet,that would be great
Cheers fatfoot

[Barcrest]

Hi BB
Would it not be time for an android app to connect to the existing jukebox via a tablet,that would be great
Cheers fatfoot

Coffee made one but it was never released, I don't code on android so there will not be one coming from me. I have it running on a windows tablet and that works well enough.

[Mark Norville]

I have not tried this, but you could set up a plex server and then you should be able to access your media from anywhere as long as you have wifi.

[ecbrad]

I have not tried this, but you could set up a plex server and then you should be able to access your media from anywhere as long as you have wifi.

Yes it works fine but it's no proper jukebox application. I use it for Movies, TV Shows and Photos. YHes music is enabled but it's no jukebox application at all. I'd love an Android version but still quite happy with my stand alone jukebox. Everyone loves it however for streaming via Tablet my wife and son use Spotify. My wife would use E-Touch if it was available.

Brad

[Barcrest]

I have not tried this, but you could set up a plex server and then you should be able to access your media from anywhere as long as you have wifi.

Yes it works fine but it's no proper jukebox application. I use it for Movies, TV Shows and Photos. YHes music is enabled but it's no jukebox application at all. I'd love an Android version but still quite happy with my stand alone jukebox. Everyone loves it however for streaming via Tablet my wife and son use Spotify. My wife would use E-Touch if it was available.

Brad

You can pick up an 8" windows tablet pretty cheap, mine cost me £37.50 and was well worth the money. I only use it for E-touch with a bluetooth speaker. If you were only using it at home you could even use the same library via a mapped drive back to your media.

This one may work,

http://www.saverstore.com/product/20925510/ZooStorm-SL8-i75-Tablet-75-Windows-10-Home-Z3735G1GB16GBTouch

It is 1024x768 so the stock skins will work out of the box.