What do you need:


* Your Apple iPad 4 . While you don’t need it for the actual process, of course if you want to watch a movie on it, you need to be able to put the movie onto it.


* The USB connection cable for your iPad 4.


* Windows-based PC in order to be able to run DVD Catalyst 4. DVD Catalyst 4 is currently only available for computers and laptops running Microsoft Windows. It works on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, on 32bit as well as 64bit systems. Currently there is no Apple Mac or Linux version available of DVD Catalyst 4.


* DVD drive for if you want to convert DVDs or a Bluray drive if you want to convert Blurays, or access to your video file collection if you want to convert AVI, MKV, M2TS etc.


* Conversion software. There is a large variety of different tools available for this. You can do it the free way, with applications such as Handbrake and Freemake, or go with one of the many overpriced applications that are found all over the internet, but for this guide I am using DVD Catalyst 4, one of the most popular conversion applications for phones and tablets due to how easy it works (1 click conversions), the support provided to you when you need it (quick, hand-typed and detailed) and the very affordable pricing (on sale for $9.95, less than the price of 2 DVDs in the sales-bin at the grocery store).

You can purchase DVD Catalyst 4 by clicking here (link), or download the free trial version by clicking here (link) The trial version converts 25% of each item.

Note: To use DVD Catalyst 4 with Blurays, extra software is needed. For DVDs and video files, it works without the need of anything else. DVD Catalyst 4 even includes its own codecs, so it is capable of converting video files you might not even be able to play on your computer.

* Movies or TV shows. Of course you need videos that you want to watch on your Apple iPad 3. You can use movies and TV shows on a disc such as a DVD or Bluray, or you can use video files such as AVI, MKV, created by other applications.

Important note:

DVD Catalyst can not convert so-called “Digital Copy” movies, or movie and TV episodes purchased through iTunes or similar online video services such as Amazon UnBox and UltraViolet. These video files are DRM-protected, which prevents software such as DVD Catalyst from converting them.

Off-the-shelf DVDs, as well as video files that do not include DRM such as AVI, DIVX, ISO, MKV, MPEG etc can be converted normally with DVD Catalyst.

5-Step Quick Guide:

Step 1: Download and install DVD Catalyst 4 on your computer.



Step 2: Start DVD Catalyst 4 and select the Apple iPad 4 profile.



Step 3: Insert your DVD or drag your video files over onto DVD Catalyst 4.



Step 4: Tap Go to start the conversion process.

Conversions can take a little while, depending on the speed of your computer. On a recent dual-core computer, the conversion of DVD to iPad 4 format runs at about 2x realtime, so a 2 hour DVD converts in 1 hour or so. If you are using a newer quad-core computer, conversions can run as fast as 8x realtime or even faster, resulting in about 15 minutes for a 2 hour movie.

Step 5. Connect your iPad 4 to your computer, start iTunes and copy the file over.

And that is it. Use the build-in Videos app on your iPad 4 to play your movie.




One question I receive quite often is in regards of converting DVDs to HD 1080p screen size.


In short, it's a bad idea.


There is a reason why Bluray movies are 35GB in size.

Because of the higher resolution of a Bluray movie, 1080p (1920x1080) more "pixels" are displayed on-screen, and each pixel uses some data in order to determine its color.

DVD movies, usually 4-8GB in size, have a lower resolution, 480p (720x480), and as a result don't need as much data.


Most conversion tools just blindly use the selected settings for the conversion process.

If you tell it to convert a DVD to 1080p resolution, it will just do that, without actually taking into account what it is doing. What happens with this is that the lower resolution video gets converted to the higher resolution (obviously), but in order to do so, pixels just get increased in size, the same way as if you zoom in on a picture. The DVD doesn't have the actual HD video, so it will use what is there to make it HD.





For a DVD to go from 720x480 to 1920x1080, each pixel gets increased about 2.5x in height (480 > 1080) and also about 2.5x in width (720 > 1920), so roughly each pixel becomes 6 pixels (2.5x2.5). Because each pixel needs some data to store its color and intensity, the file will end up 6x as large in order to store all this data, meaning that if your DVD would look good when you convert it at its original resolution to 1GB, to have the same movie converted to a 1080p resolution, you would need about 6GB for the same file, because of the 6x larger amount of pixels.


The crazyness of doing this up-scaling is that if you play a lower resolution video on a device such as a tablet or iPad, the video player will automatically scale it to fit on-screen, regardless of the resolution of the video.

So, even if you have a lower-resolution video, it will actually look the same as if you would convert this to a higher resolution video, because the video player does the same type of scaling as a conversion tool would do.

The only difference is that the lower resolution video file is a lot smaller in file-size.



This is where DVD Catalyst works a bit different. It actually does take the resolution into account when you convert stuff.

Of course if you want, you can tell it to upscale the video to a higher resolution, but by default, it actually looks at the selected screen resolution and the resolution of the video, and only when needed it will scale the video.

As a result, it is able to convert your movies considerably faster (about 1 hour for a 2 hour movie on a dual-core computer), and end up with better quality video and a smaller file-size.

About DVD Catalyst 4

DVD Catalyst 4 converts your movie and TV show collection (DVD, AVI, MKV, ISO etc) to great quality video files that are perfectly optimized to play on portable devices.

Convert DVDs with a single click of the button, convert 1 or 100 video files in batch-mode by using Drag & Drop, remove black bars, include subtitles or closed captions.

It includes pre-configured profiles for 1000s of devices, including the latest Apple devices (iPad 4, iPad Mini, iPhone 5) Barnes & Noble NOOK HD and NOOK HD+, Amazon Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Fire HD 8.9, Google Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10 and much much more.

Regular price $19.95, for a limited time only $9.95

Purchase Now and save over 50%