[TriLUG] mostly OT: movies on the go?

[David Burton via TriLUG]

Well, battery life shouldn't be a problem if you get one of these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Practical-Power-Supply-Car-Charger-Adapter-For-SONY-HP-IBM-Dell-80W-Laptop-BD-/371211951274

Also, most replacement laptop batteries are $15-$30 on eBay.

Dave


On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 11:36 PM, Dewey Hylton via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org
> wrote:

> i have two children, aged 9 and 12. we make (sometimes long) family road
> trips. they do read, but we've always offered movies to pass the time as
> well.
>
> we started out with a (horrible) vhs player and screen built into the
> vehicle. when that vehicle went away, i hacked fedora (linux!) onto an OLPC
> laptop and played movies via vlc and a thumb drive. that hardware died, and
> i purchased two portable dvd players with built-in screens that hang from
> the backs of the front seat headrest. one of those has since died and the
> other is unreliable. so i'm on the hunt for a better way to do this ...
>
> my favorite was the OLPC method, simply because managing thumb drives is
> so easy; so what i'm looking for first is some way to play movies off a
> thumb drive or even an SD card. even the cheap laptops seem overly
> expensive for this use.* the laptops i have currently would work but
> wouldn't last a whole movie before their aged batteries were drained. *i've
> considered a raspberry pi solution but am so far unsure about how to manage
> the need for keyboard/mouse and what type of display i'd need.
>
> would anyone like to make a recommendation? detailed solution involving a
> raspberry pi would be cool. are tablets an option? i believe vlc is
> available for android ... does anyone make a relatively cheap android
> tablet which could play a movie and read from some kind of removable media?
>
> just starting the discovery process tonight, but our next trip is only a
> few weeks away ...