BlackBerry® PlayBook™

[Supperman]

I got two full length AVI movies I downloaded to my tablet by sending it from my computer using a free large file transfer site ( that I know works ) via a mail message and both finished normally, appear in my file manager with an image thumbnail, seem to open in the media player but only show a black screen without any sound. ( Time Counter Begins - Continues without any Difference in Audio or Display ) 

The help pages on the Playbook confirm AVI is a compatible format and offer little information thereafter in reference to content viewing problems. 

A look in the marketplace ( Blackberry Store ) fails to offer any no cost applications for videos to allow me to test them on this machine with another program but I was able to watch them on my Windows laptop before trying to copy them onto this system. 

My first motion picture is an hour long and about one Gigabyte in size but the second is twice the length with a total of 1500 Megabytes. 

I tried restarting but situation remains the same after several attempts.

[SmoothRider]

Hello Supperman, 

Sorry to hear about your issue. 

Have a look at the following document that will cover the supported media formats along with some additional information on codecs. 

Supported Media Types on BlackBerry Tablets

Hope this helps. Have a good day. 

[Supperman]

The old codec and format issue - nothing ever says WE WAS UNABLE TO MAKE THINGS SIMPLE more than this being used as a reason when the majority of it requires hours of reading just to basically end back at the beginning where nobody explained anything or had any other information to offer except the compatibility speech. 

A good way to simplify your response is that the video situation basically requires a file converter and that bothers me because it ideally means relying on another computer when Blackberry fails to have one available in the market or most online have a size limitation below that of a movie. 

I originally hoped this tablet was capable of performing the most popular functions people use everyday, like a netbook, but this is definitely not the way I see it now when so many films are UNABLE to PLAY on the PLAYBOOK. ( Ironic ) 

Thanks for the reply Smooth because not one other person cared to offer assistance. 

[knottyrope]

half of my AVI files do not work, the encoding is an off type and I used handbrake to reencode them to MP4.

I only have had 1 mp4 file out of 100s not work so far.

My win 7 PC wont even play the AVI file unless i install VLC.

AVI is too generic and there are way to many codecs out there.

[Supperman]

I wiped my tablet, with my files still available on my computer naturally, and then reloaded them to the tablet without any problems watching or hearing them at this point. My guess is there was a hidden file somewhere that was preventing the system from loading the information, decoding it or whatever.

The process was time consuming and I hope not to have to do it in the future but maybe this is consequence when I downloaded the films from a site for free - without any real idea if they pay the copyright owners. ( A easy way for me to feel better about it but I also want to add that I really got little money to be able to afford these materials myself, that a lot of it can be found directly on HULU and I only saved three total motion pictures with about ten muisc songs that I expect to use only in the event I go somewhere without an internet connection because all of the content are favorites of mine that still interest me after playing them several times. ) 

[knottyrope]

yeah that is a bit drastic to make a video work, not sure why it would do that but glad you are doing better now.