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If you're an early adopter willing to forget everything you know about navigating a computer, the Surface tablet could replace your laptop. Everyone else: wait for more apps.
The Good: The Microsoft Surface's Metro interface is innovative, elegant, powerful, and versatile. The tablet feels strong and well-built, runs Office 2013, and includes rich video and music services. Its keyboard cover accessories are the best ways to type on a tablet, period.
The Bad: The tablet's performance can be sluggish, its Windows Store is a ghost town, Metro takes getting used to, and the Desktop interface feels clunky and useless.
Featuring a 10.6-inch ClearType HD display, Microsoft Surface RT & Pro Tablet can bring you brand-new visual perception. However, if you have a glance on the main spec of Microsoft surface Tablets, it's easy to find that Windows 8 Tablet video format is limited as other tablets. Thus, you may have problems when playing movies on the Surface RT tablet. Below is a list of frequently asked questions, tips, tutorials and recommeded tools for Surface RT users to better enjoy movies. Some of these are solutions to questions asked in the forums.
FAQ, Tips, Tricks & Tutorials for Enjoying Movies on Microsoft Surface RT
FAQ 1: MKV files playback on Surface RT
Do you know a Player for Windows RT that supports MKV files playback? I′ve been using VLC or even CineXPlayer for other platforms...
A: As you see, MKV is an open standard free container format, a file format can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. he reason you cannot successfully get some MKV videos playable on your Surface is quite simple: the default and downloaded player on the Microsoft Surface Tablet cannot find a suitable decoder for the codec in the MKV file. So you will meet problems such as audio and video out of sync, video without sound, or even can’t be played. To get your work done, the best solution is to convert MKV to Kindle Fire HD supported video format along with some help from third-party softwares.
Tutorial: Converting MKV to MP4 video for Surface RT
FAQ 2: Video Playback (avi files) on Surface RT
How are you playing back avi files on the surface, what's everyone using ??? I've found the stock video player to be a wee bit choppy
Q: Just like MKV, AVI can hold different types of video and audio streams, which has become the most popular container file format used for sharing high-quality video on the Internet and watching video on the PC. AVI files support a range of video and codecs, thus it’s common to see AVI files encoded with DivX and Xvid codec. People can easily access both DivX AVI and Xvid AVI files on a PC, while for watching these AVI files on the recently released tablet PCs like Microsoft Surface RT and Surface Pro, things get troublesome. People often get "Can't play" errors when trying to put and play AVI files on Surface tablet. If that is the case, you will have to make a conversion from AVI to MP4 for viewing on Surface RT.
Tutorial: Smoothly Play All AVI files on Surface RT
FAQ 3: Playing wmv files?
I copied over a load of wmv files that play happily on my Windows 7 PC, using a memory stick. But if I click on them on my Surface I get the message 'format not supported.' This seems strange - any ideas, anyone please?
A: The reason behind Microsoft's omission can be speculated and theorized that Microsoft didn't include Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center in Windows RT. You can get movies/videos formatted in .wmv through a variety of ways. Some WMV files downloaded or purchased from BBC iPlayer, Amazon, Blockbuster, Blu-ray/DVD Digital Copies, wbdigitalcopy, etc. are protected by Microsoft's DRM system. Some downloaded WMV files are non-DRM protected. For the non-DRM contents, you just need to convert them. Below are two solutions for you, which can help you transfer and play all WMV files on Surface RT tablet smoothly.
Tutorial: How to Play DRM-protected WMV files on Surface RT
Tutorial: How to play non-DRM WMV files on Surface RT. This tutorial can also help you solve the problems when playing VOB, TiVo, TS, MPG etc. video files on Surface RT tablet.
FAQ 4: Sync iTunes with Surface
Q: I just bought a new Microsoft Surface RT tablet and I am wondering if I could play music files I purchased on iTunes on my Surface? I have searched around the internet but I haven't got a specific answer to this question. Besides, the movies and TV-shows I have purchased on iTunes will be playable on my RT surface?
A: Before answering your question, keep in mind that the Microsoft Surfce RT can not play any iTunes purchases with Apple Digital Rights Management (FairPlay DRM). However, all iTunes songs (at least in the US) will be DRM-free in steps since April 7, 2009. From my experience, if the song isn't copy protected it should play. For the little copyrighted iTunes songs, in .m4p format, you can upgrade these songs to DRM-free files for US$0.30/song or use DRM removal software to strip DRM from them.
For iTunes videos, if they are video podcasts from iTunes, you can play them on your Surface RT without any problem. But if they are Movies, TV-shows or Music videos which you purchased directly through iTunes store, they are all with DRM protection which prevent you playing them on your Surface. To get the iTunes DRM m4v files and Surface RT to play nicely, you can follow a simple tutorial below:
Tutorial: Convert iTunes DRM M4V for Surface RT
FAQ 5: Best Software to rip DVD to Surface RT?
I'm traveling again next week and was hoping to rip some dvds onto my Surface tablet for the trip. I have a few questions for the community experts:
Any suggestions on some easy to use, reliable software?
Any tips for the best format to use?
A: DVD Ripping software varies. If you're looking for ease-to-use and don't mind spending $24.5 (they currently have a sale), you can try Pavtube's DVD Ripper to convert DVD discs to a format playable by Surface RT. To be honest, It is easy to use for editing and conversion and makes great quality copies of my DVDs. I've found the quality to be excellent, and see no difference when compared to playing the discs themselves.
The best format is H.264 MP4 causes it gives the balance between the file size and video quality.
Tutorial: Converting DVDs for playback with Surface RT
FAQ 6: What do you recommend if watch my Blu-ray movies on Microsoft Surface tablet?
What do you recommend if you I want to watch my BD movies on my new Microsoft Surface tablet? It’s really a new tablet and finds no guide to tell how to transfer Blu ray movie to the tablet for watching, any of you can help?
A: In order to play Blu-ray on your Kindle Fire HD, you'll need to convert and rip Blu-ray to Kindle Fire HD compatible video formats first and then transfer them to your Kindle Fire HD for playback. For details, refer to a guide below:
Tutorial: Converting Blu-ray movies for Surface RT
FAQ 7: ISO on Surface?
I've some DVD ISO image files from my DVD discs and now I want to copy them to my new Surface RT for playback, so how?
A: ISO is not supported by Surface RT and other tablets. To get ISO files playable on your Microsoft Surface Tablet, you may have to convert DVD iso to Surface RT supported video format first. For your reference, follow the guide below:
Tutorial: Convert and Play ISO to Surface RT
If you have no idea about Surface file transfer, you can check out the post The Ways Transferring Files to Your Surface to learn more. If you have any problem when enjoying videos on Surface tablet, just check out Microsoft Surface RT Column to learn more.
As you see, now you can effortlessly watch Amazon Instant WMV videos on Microsoft Surface RT tablet and enjoy the show. If your movie isn’t already in one of the supported formats or it’s still on a DVD or Blu-ray, you can get an all-in-1 video covnerter app - 20% OFF dsicount Blu-ray Video Converter Ulitimate (or its Mac Version - 20% OFF discount iMedia Converter Mac) to encode movies to play on your Surface tablet with ease.
