In This Chapter
Finding videos
Playing videos on your iPad
Restricting movies
Picture this scene: The smell of popcorn permeates the room as you and your family congregate to watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster. A motion picture soundtrack swells up. The images on the screen are stunning. And all eyes are fixed on the iPad.
Okay, here comes the reality check. The iPad is not going to replace a wall-sized high-definition television as the centerpiece of your home theater. But we do want to emphasize that with its gorgeous, nearly 10-inch, high-definition display — arguably the best we've seen on a handheld device — watching movies and other videos on the iPad can be a cinematic delight. The screen looks terrific even when you're not viewing it straight on.
So without any further ado, let's get on with the show!
You have a couple of main ways to find and watch videos on your iPad. You can fetch all sorts of fare from the iTunes Store, whose virtual doors you can open directly from the iPad.
Or, you can sync content that already resides on your PC or Mac. (If you haven't done so yet, now is as good a time as any to read Chapter 3 for all the details.)
The videos you can watch on the iPad generally fall into one of the following categories:
Movies, TV shows, and music videos that you purchase or fetch free in the iTunes Store: You can watch these by tapping the Videos icon on the Home screen.
The iTunes Store features dedicated sections for purchasing episodes of TV shows (from Glee to Modern Family), as shown in Figure 9-1, and for buying or renting movies (from Up In The Air to Avatar), as shown in Figure 9-2.
The typical price as of this writing is $1.99 to pick up a single episode of a popular TV show in standard definition or $2.99 for high-def versions. Or, you might purchase a complete season of a favorite show. The final season of Lost, for example, costs $34.99 in standard-def and $49.99 in high-def.
Feature films fetch prices from $9.99 to $19.99.
You can also rent some movies, typically for $2.99, $3.99, or $4.99. We're not wild about current rental restrictions — you have 30 days to begin watching a rented flick and a day to finish watching after you've started, though you can watch as often you want during the 24-hour period. But that's showbiz for you. Such films appear in their own Rented Movies section in the video list, which you get to by tapping Videos. The number of days before your rental expires is displayed. And you have to completely download a movie onto your iPad before you can start watching it.
As shown in Figure 9-3, by tapping a movie listing in iTunes, you can generally watch a trailer before buying (or renting) and check out additional tidbits: plot summary, credits, reviews, and customer ratings, as well as other movies that appealed to the buyer of this one. And you can search films by genre or top charts (the ones other people are buying or renting), or rely on the Apple Genius feature for recommendations based on stuff you've already watched. (Genius works for movies and TV much the way it works for music, as we explain in Chapter 8.)
The boatload of video podcasts, just about all of them free, featured in the iTunes Store: Podcasts started out as another form of Internet radio, although instead of listening to live streams, you download files onto your computer or iPod to take in at your leisure. You can still find lots of audio podcasts, but the focus here is on video. You can watch free episodes that cover Sesame Street videos, sports programming, investing strategies, political shows (across the ideological spectrum), and so much more.
Videos that play via entertainment apps: For example, Netflix offers an app that enables you to use your Netflix subscription, if you have one, to stream video on your iPad. We like it so much, it made our list of favorites in Chapter 16. Similarly, the ABC television network offers an appealing app so that you can catch up on its shows on your iPad.
Take a seminar at Harvard, Stanford, or numerous other prestigious institutions: iTunes University boasts more than 250,000 free lectures from around the world, many of them videos. Better yet, you get no grades, and you don't have to apply for admission, write an essay, or do homework. Figure 9-4 shows the iTunes U description for Open University's The Galapagos, one of the learned videos we watched. Bring on our sheepskins.
Homegrown videos from the popular YouTube Internet site: Apple obviously thinks highly of YouTube because it devoted a dedicated Home screen icon to the site. You can read more on YouTube's special status in the iPad in Chapter 6.
The movies you've created in iMovie software or other software on the Mac or, for that matter, other programs on the PC: Plus all the other videos you may have downloaded from the Internet.
Note
You may have to prepare these videos so that they'll play on your iPad. To do so, highlight the video in question after it resides in your iTunes library. Go to the Advanced menu in iTunes, and click Create iPad or Apple TV Version. Alas, this doesn't work for all the video content you download off the Internet, including video files in the AVI, DivX, MKV, and Xvid formats. You need help transferring them to iTunes and converting them to iPad-friendly formats from other software programs added to your PC or Mac.
For more on compatibility, check out the nearby "Are we compatible?" sidebar (but read it at your own risk).
Now that you know what you want to watch, here's how to watch it:
On the Home screen, tap the Videos icon.
Videos stored on your iPad are segregated by category — Movies, Rented Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Music Videos, and iTunes U. For each category, you see the program's poster art, as shown in Figure 9-5. Categories such as Rented Movies, Podcasts, and iTunes U only appear if you have that type of content loaded on the machine.
At the top of the screen, select the tab that corresponds to the type of video you want to watch.
Tap the poster that represents the movie, TV show, or other video you want to watch.
You see a full description of the movie you want to watch, along with a listing of cast and filmmakers, as shown in Figure 9-6. Tap the Chapters tab to browse the chapters. You see thumbnail images and the length of the chapter. Tap the Info tab to return to a description.
To start playing a movie (or resume playing from where you left off), tap the Play button, labeled in Figure 9-6. Alternatively, from the Chapters view (see Figure 9-7), tap any chapter to start playing from that point.
If you go to Settings from the Home screen and tap Video, you can change the default setting to start playing from where you left off to start playing from the beginning.
(Optional) Rotate your iPad to landscape mode to maximize a movie's display.
If you hold the iPad in portrait mode, you can see black bars on top of and below the screen where the movie is playing. Those bars remain when you rotate the device to its side, but the iPad is now playing the film in a wider-screen mode.
For movies, this is a great thing. You can watch flicks as the filmmaker intended, in a cinematic aspect ratio.
Note
The iPad doesn't give you a full high-definition presentation because that requires 1280-×−720-pixel resolution and the iPad's screen is 1024 × 768, meaning that it is scaled down slightly. Having said that, we don't think too many viewers are going to complain or even notice about the quality of the images.
While a video is playing, tap the screen to display the controls shown in Figure 9-8. Then you can tap a control to activate it. Here's what each of the controls can do:
To play or pause the video, tap the Play/Pause button.
To adjust the volume, drag the volume slider to the right to raise the volume and to the left to lower it. Alternatively, use the physical Volume buttons to control the audio levels.
To restart or go back, tap the Restart/Rewind button to restart the video or tap and hold the same button to rewind.
To skip forward, tap and hold Fast Forward to advance the video. Or, skip ahead by dragging the playhead along the Scrubber bar.
To set how the video fills the screen, tap the Scale button, which toggles between filling the entire screen with video or fitting the video to the screen. Alternatively, you can double-tap the video to go back and forth between fitting and filling the screen. You only see this button or can double-tap to change the scale when the iPad is in landscape mode.
Fitting the video to the screen displays the film in its theatrical aspect ratio. But again you may see black bars above or below the video (or to its sides), which some people don't like. Filling the entire screen with the video may crop or trim the sides or top of the picture, so you aren't seeing the complete scene that the director shot.
To select language and subtitle settings, tap the Audios and Subtitles button. You see options to select a different language, turn on or hide subtitles, and turn on or hide closed captioning. The control only appears if the movie supports any of these features or if you've turned on closed captioning in Video Settings. (It's not shown in Figure 9-8.)
To make the controls go away, tap the screen again (or just wait for them to go away on their own).
To tell your iPad you're done watching a video, tap Done. (You have to summon the controls back if they're not already present.) You return to the last Videos screen that was visible before you started watching the movie.
If you've given an iPad to your kid or someone who works for you, you may not want that person spending time watching movies or television. You might want him or her to do something more productive like homework or the quarterly budget.
That's where parental (or might we say "Mean Boss") restrictions come in. Please note that the use of this iron-fist tool can make you really unpopular.
Tap Settings
Tip
Restrictions can also be applied to iTunes, Safari, the App Store, YouTube, and location settings, as you see when we delve into Settings further (in Chapter 13).
Video takes up space — lots of space. After the closing credits roll and you no longer want to keep a video on your iPad, here's what you need to know about deleting video:
To delete a video manually to save some space on your iPad, tap and hold its movie poster until the small circled x shows up on the poster. To confirm your intention, tap the larger Delete button that appears or tap Cancel if you change your mind.
Note
Deleting a movie from the iPad only removes it from the iPad. It remains in the iTunes library on your PC or Mac. That means if you want to watch it on your iPad again in the future, you can do so, as long as you sync it again.
Warning
If you delete a rented movie before you had a chance to watch it on your iPad, it's gone. You have to spend some loot if you hope to watch it in the future on the iPad.