Above is just an ad for some converter program called pavtube.. -3000 points IMHO..
To play video that is 720p, the video must be 30fps at most, and at 1280x720 resolution. Next, you will need a good player. The player needs to support hardware and software decoding. BS Player Lite, and Mirage Beta both do. Rokplayer, MX player, and many others DO NOT. Even if you meet the requirements you will find that some video's cannot play properly - this is just how these things go sometimes. BSPlayer and Mirage will play SD files in XViD format just fine, which is how most files are packaged from release groups, which is how most torrent files arrive. MP4, and MKV are difficult to decode, and not commonly available yet, this is quickly changing though. Anyways, avoid converting files if you can, as it is time consuming, and a waste of space..tedious at best..often still this will fail to produce playable files. Keep the faith, ICS (Android 4) will be out on the A500 "SOON" for US users. Even with 4.0.4 and kernel tweaks, my a500 still cannot play every .mkv file I throw at it.
THe tablet can play 1080p just fine. Keep it within standard .mp4 and .avi (even plays wmv) or 1080p vts folder structure. As long as the app is hardware driven and not soft driven.
It however only outputs 1080p via HDMI. If you are going to watch a movie on the tablet, 720p should be the limit (display wise).
I can rip straight from a blu ray to the video/audio only setting and get perfect play back. Some devices use custom bit rates and settigns that are non standard and can cause issues in various players when their codec isn't installed.
Question is. Those having issues with 1080p playback. Are you playing from the SD card, and if so, are you using the recommended class 6-10 cards? Rather then slower class 4's. I use a class 10 or otherwise some high def videos will hicup. Shoudln't but they do. You definatly need higher then a cals 2 or 4 for 720P+ transfer speeds. Buffering isn't that great.
IF going from the network. Set Wireless N only on yoru router to the devices if multi band and enable media mode. Proper playback is avaible while conencted with proper player and HDMI, or it will downscale the video.
Converting might be an issue for some people, but the thing is, especially with web-obtained mkv's and other video files, you have to be very lucky to have files that play properly, and then, one player works best with some, and other players work better with others.
Unlike what many people believe, the Acer 500, Acer 100, Xoom, Transformer, Thrive and whatever Tegra-based tablet you can find, all are perfectly capable of playing 1080p video without hickups and stutter, even with the build-in Gallery video player. It is just a matter of using the proper video settings to make sure your video files are compatible with the hardware decoder.
Converting videos might be time consuming, but at least you can be sure that your video file will play properly on your tablet, rather than having to fiddle between settings and players for each video file you try and play.
