Some iPad3 Pictures

[dvdcatalyst]

As mentioned in the newsletter (link) my iPad3 came in earlier, so I snapped some pictures of it, along with the Xoom, Kindle Fire, NOOKtablet, iPod Touch 4 and my cat.



The quality of the pictures isn't the greatest, sorry about that. I still have to set something up to get a better lighting and such, but the pics at least give you an idea of what it looks like:

The iPad3, fresh out of the box

The iPad3 is shipped pretty good. The shipping box is sturdy, and the iPad3 box itself is pretty strong as well. The lid fits on quite snug, so it took a bit of shaking to get it off.


iPad3 Boot Logo

Thankfully the iPad3 came with a charge (about 85%) so I could start it up right out of the box.


iPad3 First Start

Booting didn't take too long. Speed was about similar to that of the Xoom. An interesting thing I noticed that when you turn on the iPad3 the first time, the slider has Japanese characters. Once you slide, the language is set to English by default though.


After working yourself through the setup, wifi, Apple ID stuff you get to the home-screen.




During setup, I did not enable Location Services, and when I wanted to change my time-zone to correct the time, I could not manually adjust this setting. I looked for a bit, but the only way I could find was to enable location services, which updated my time correctly, and after that, I turned it back off. It is probably something I missed.


Tools4Movies.com website on iPad3

Of course, the first thing I did was to see how my own website looks on the iPad3. With its display, I can tell you it looks great


iPad3 and iPod Touch 4

Of course I did a quick compare of the screen with that of its (now almost 2 years old) little brother, the iPod Touch 4, which features similar screen (Retina) technology. For text, both look really nice.


Kitty love with iPad3

While trying to take pictures, my cat (the inspiration for the DVD Catalyst name, as well as the cat-eye logo) wanted to see what was going on.


Kitty Cat iPad3 Owner

And decided to take ownership


iPad3 next to Xoom, Landscape mode

After asking nicely, he did let me snap some comparison shots of the iPad 3 with other tablets and devices I have. Above one with the Xoom.


iPad3 next to Xoom Landscape

Size-wise, there isn't actually that much difference between the Xoom and the iPad3. The iPad is a lot thinner though.


iPad3 next to NOOKtablet

Of course with the 7" tablets like the NOOKtablet, the iPad is considerably larger. I really do believe Apple missed the boat in terms of portability with the iPad, but supposedly a smaller version will be released later this year.


iPad3 next to Kindle Fire

Above a picture with the iPad3 and the Kindle Fire. Amazon's Kindle Fire is currently, in my opinion, the only Android-based tablet that can take on Apple's iPad and hold its own.


Of course spec-wise and modding-wise, there are plenty of better tablets out there, but only Amazon offers a full-package like Apple does. Apps is one thing, but using the same account for books, movies, tv shows and music makes both the iDevices and the Kindle Fire stand out above the rest when you are looking for a media content device.


Xoom - iPad3 - NOOKtablet - Kindle Fire - iPod Touch4 Group Shot

And a picture of all of the ones above together to give you an idea of the size of them

[dvdcatalyst]

Of course, after checking out the tools4movies.com website on the iPad3, to see what it looks like, I had to test video playback.
Great screen, retina, sharper than 1080, all nice, but the aspect ratio of the iPad3 is its biggest let-down for me:


If you take a normal high-profile movie, such as Transformers 3, and watch it on a Motorola Xoom, you end up with some borders on top and bottom of the video due to the aspect ratio of the screen being different than that of the actual movie.



On the 10" wide-screen display of the Xoom, you end up (for this movie) with borders of about 1" or so.

But if we watch the exact same movie file on the iPad3, which does not have a wide-screen aspect ration, you end up with this:



which looks a bit sad unfortunately.

Of course, you can use the "zoom" function on the iPad3:



Which turns this:



into this:



but you will lose about half (!) of the actual movie.



For a media company such as Apple, especially with the Macbook, iMac, iPhone and iPod Touch all being wide-screen, this is a big let-down.
The next iPad, I really hope that they finally bring the iPad to the 21st century and release it with a wide-screen Retina display.

[dvdcatalyst]

After playing with the new iPad 3 for a few days, I came up with some video settings for DVD Catalyst 4 that work really well for just about everything you want to convert.


Unless you actually create your own video content, the screen resolution of the iPad 3 can not be matched by any video you can get. The iPad 3's 2048 x 1536 is a lot higher than the highest Bluray resolution, 1080, 1920 x 1080, so, it is best to select that resolution in DVD Catalyst 4.

Aside from that, I recommend using the recently added HQXT format for it to squeeze a bit more quality out of your videos along with the CRF setting.

If you are new to converting your movies for your new iPad, I would recommend starting with the steps in this guide first:
Ultimate Apple iPad 3 Video How To Guide | Tools4Movies | DVD Catalyst 4

and get a few conversions under your belt before you adjust your settings to the ones in this article.

So, here are the steps:

1. Select the Apple iPad3 HQXT profile:




2. Tap on "Modify" and set the screen-size to 1920x1080.



3. Enable "Power User", and in Global Settings > Tweaks, enable CRF, and set it to 20 for excellent quality, 24 for good quality at a reasonable file-size.



And that is it.

Using these settings, I converted "The Adventures of Tin Tin" from Bluray

(bluray guide link)

and ended up with the following file:



(I added the cover image for the movie using iTunes. Look in the iPad3 Guide for information on how to do that)







If you are familiar with video conversion, you might have noticed I did not change the video bitrate in the iPad3 profile settings.

Because I enabled CRF, the video bitrate is automatically adjusted to preserve the quality throughout the movie.

You can find more information about CRF here:
What is CRF? | Tools4Movies | DVD Catalyst 4

for the Bluray conversion of Tin Tin, the bitrate distribution through out the movie (with CRF set to 20) looks like this:



The large peak at 42:33 is a scene change to Tin Tin and Haddock in a little boat on the ocean. I expected the 55Mbps spike to cause stutter or an issue with video playback, but the iPad 3 nicely pushed through.

The above settings are safe for all your conversions. Even if you convert lower-resolution content such as DVDs or AVI files, DVD Catalyst 4 keeps the original resolution to maximize quality (the iPad itself will scale it to fit properly on its display) and to make sure the video size doesn't get ridiculously big. Of course higher-resolution videos will take up a bit more space.

If you are converting an action movie, you might want to adjust the CRF setting to 22 though. A value of 20 can be a bit much.

[JSM9872]

My gf wants one of these pretty bad, I might let her get one

Thanks for the pics and info!!

[dvdcatalyst]

My gf wants one of these pretty bad, I might let her get one

Thanks for the pics and info!!

You are welcome JSM.

I picked one up for testing, but I'll be sticking to Android tablets for my own use. Once I am done with it, my wife will be using it. I had her play with a few Android devices, and she even has an Android phone, but she seems to be better at home with the iPad.

[JSM9872]

That's funny, my gf is the oposite. Loves her Acer A500 but switched to an iPhone.

[dvdcatalyst]

That's funny, my gf is the oposite. Loves her Acer A500 but switched to an iPhone.

My wife isn't much into tech. It took her a few months to get used to the TiVo

I had her play with my Xoom, but that was still in its early days, then I tried the NOOKcolor (and recently the NOOKtablet) but every time she started to get the hang of it, the touch-screen part starts acting up. Either non responsive, or it gets stuck at a certain point.
The iPad is a bit easier for her, and I noticed a big difference with when I handed her the Android stuff before and last night the iPad.

With the Android devices, she asked me how things worked, but on the iPad, she found her way without asking anything.