iPad Air + 10bit mkv 720p/1080p + High Bitrate
 

This is really more of a public service announcement and not really a post for help. I recently got my hands on an iPad Air and I wanted to demo its 10bit mkv playback capability. ImperialX made a similar post a while back with the iPhone 5. I found his post extremely helpful in my decision for a new smartphone at the time and so I decided to return the favor for anyone else who may be looking to pick up the iPad Air for anime playback this coming holiday season.

Just a bit of background. As you all know, to playback 10bit h264 mkvs requires a decent computer. With the push of mobile devices in recent years, I've been waiting for the day when tablet hardware overcomes that threshold for perfectly smooth 10bit h264 mkv playback regardless of resolution or bitrate.

Apple's new A7 chip in the iPad Air (@1.4Ghz), from benchmarks and reviews, pretty much destroys everything else on the market. Having previously tested the Nexus 7 (2013) with 10bit h264 mkv playback, I figured the A7 would be a good benchmark. As of November 2013, the iPad Air is the most powerful tablet on the market. Period.

Here are my results:


So as you can see, we're not yet there for perfection, but we're very close and for most people, it will probably handle what you need and then some. Only if you download and watch high bitrate 1080p blu-ray rips will you run into playback issues.

Hope this was informative and if anyone was in the market to buy a tablet for anime viewing, I hope this helped your decision.

I found mostly-acceptable results with iMedia Player, but yeah, it sadly still has a ways to go.

...why do fansubbers like 10bit so much, anyway?

10-bit offers better compression whilst somewhat increasing depth and quality over 8-bit. Problem is, they also require more computing power to run just as well.

10-bit is better for subbers as they can release smaller files, upload them faster and have a generally better looking video. Like I said, it starts to suffer when you present it to tablet, phone and slower/older computer users, as the additional strain causes that nasty jitter during playback.

Also, for that already high price range, look into Microsoft's new Surface Pro lineup. There is a version one and two, but the Pro 2 runs on an i5 Haswell processor. Technically an ultrabook tablet yes, but a portable tablet nonetheless. Just run CCCP and MPC directly on it, and 1080p BD 10-bit FLAC mkv files run smooth as butter with stylized subs.

To get MKV videos played on iPad Air, the most effective way is to convert MKV to MP4 with best video settings for iPad Air. Now follow this article here.