Mac ignorant ipad questions

[immunoboy7]

Situation: Three PCs, two laptops at home with mp3s organized on mediamonkey
Need: Tablet device that could be used to read PDFs (my weekend work reading), surf the web on wi-fi only, play games that keep the 4 year old occupied, listen to music, play ripped DVDs I own on plane rides for the 4 year old
Issue: I’d like to get a wi-fi ipad2.
I have never used itunes. Does anyone have itunes and mediamonkey running on a PC? Are there issues?
Any problems ripping DVDs on a PC and then transferring them to an ipad? Excuse the stupid questions – can the ipad sync well with a PC, or would you have to transfer via wi-fi?
Can you watch streaming Netflix?


Many thanks for any answers to these questions.

 

[GrantMeThePower]

Everything will work perfectly with you, except that i dont know what media monkey is.

Ripped DVDs are fine. Everything else you mentioned, it excels at.

You can even use iBooks for the PDF's. Its free. There are others also, but i think iBooks is easy for PDF reading

 

[Paperlantern]

Ive not used mediamonkey, but i do just use a share with itunes and it has no issues. If i tunes can see the files you can put them into your library, and likewise, onto a iDevice.

Shouldnt be an issue, I use VLC player on my iphone for a lot of file types, just use itunes to drop them on the device, open them on the device with VLC, i would imagine as long as a file format you choose is playable by the player youre fine. it syncs fine with a PC.

You CAN watch streaming netflix (with appropriate connection present of course).

 

[Patranus]

Just install XBMC on your iPad and you are good to go.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Just install XBMC on your iPad and you are good to go.

iPad 2 doesn't have a public jailbreak yet.

 

[Eug]

Ripping DVDs will work, but Apple's iOS products are very picky with file formats. You may have to do a few trial runs at encoding if you don't like the default iPad settings for whatever encoder you decide you use.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Just make sure you use handbrake and you should be fine.

 

[immunoboy7]

Thanks folks.

 

[Eug]

Just make sure you use handbrake and you should be fine.

...if you use the default settings. In my case I like to encode with settings with higher quality than targeted for say an iPhone, so they look better when played on a larger screen.

Once you start changing settings away from Handbrake's Apple-device defaults, sometimes iTunes/iPhone/iPad may start giving you a hard time, which is why you might need a few trial runs.