iPad Questions

[Pushkar]

Hello, first time poster for some reason - not sure why I haven't posted before .

Im sure that some of my questions will be unanswerable at this point, but if anyone does know some of these, I'd appreciate the answer/s.

1) Will it support other codecs such as DivX, and possibly MKV

I mean it's only an 'iPhone OS' but surely Apple will allow some sort of advanced softwares, I have personally jailbroken my iPhone and there is a 'VLC for iPhone' app on Cydia which I haven't tested as the screen is too small to watch movies on. Will it be able to be jailbroken and developers can possibly make an app which will support this?

2) Video programs, Im from the UK and we currently have Sky Mobile TV which shows live sports on the iPhone for a monthly fee, Until Sky make a new optimized app for iPad, will it still look good?

3) TV Tuners

Would it be able to support a USB TV Tuner if you bought all the adapters and cables? Apple has deffo got this USB thing wrong.

4) USB Support

After buying the adapter, can it read USB sticks and hard drives? I'd be interested in the iWork for iPad - not sure how easy it will be but reading documents from a USB would be great, if possible - but it's only an 'iPhone OS'

Thanks for reading, I hope you can answer some of these - I'll probably wait until a couple of months to see what developments has happened with the iPad and what apps are available, but I would love to have it as a Media/Surf device. Thanks

 

[gwynne]

1) Will it support other codecs such as DivX, and possibly MKV

Not out of the box. It supports an .AVI format but it's an obscure-ish codec, apparently used mostly for camcorders. (Someone else can correct me here.)

Will it be jailbroken? In a couple of decades of being a nerd, about the only thing I've seen that hasn't been hacked is the PS3, and I haven't looked into that lately. I'm guessing it will indeed get hacked.

I don't know much about jailbreaking iphones (I've got an old 2G and it never seemed worth it), but it's good to know about the VLC thing. Of course, I'm not really clear on how you would get that content on the device.

 

[Saberon]

1) Will it support other codecs such as DivX, and possibly MKV

Highly doubt it, if you have to JB your iPhone to do something, it's not going to be native on the iPad.

2) Video programs, Im from the UK and we currently have Sky Mobile TV which shows live sports on the iPhone for a monthly fee, Until Sky make a new optimized app for iPad, will it still look good?

It will look "good enough" I think, not as good as the iPhone because obviously it is scaled up to a bigger screen. I think it will be good enough for sure.

3) TV Tuners

Not sure, doubt it though

4) USB Support
It sounds like it just has an adapter for downloading camera pictures, Apple likes to lock things down and the chance of "real" USB support is almost non existant