You could just hook up the camera to a normal computer, and then view/control that computer with a VNC app on the ipad.

I don't think you guys are getting his point. He wants to use his iPad as a monitor not something to watch streaming video on.

I work for major market television station and believe it or not our professional cameras do not have a color monitor all we have is a 1.5" b & W viewfinder, It would be nice to take a composite video signal and plug it into the iPad and view the video, its would also be cool if we have waveform and vector scopes on the iPad as well, who ever makes that happen will be one rich man.

Come on. I thought you all were smart. I want to use the iPad as an external monitor and I want one connection that's not through wifi or a URL. Just direct connectors. Who knows how to do this?

Unfortunately I don't thing the hardware requirements are there on the iPad to this, the only way I can think of Is to some how use the FireWire interface to input a dv signal into the iPad however I don't know if the FireWire port on the iPad can handle that.

I too am looking to get a video signal into the IPAD. No stream, no VNC, just a cable. Could be VGA, NTSC composite , RGB, HD, I don't care. From the specs page on the Apple store, it looks like it's all about output. Let me know if anyone finds a way to do it

I have been wanting the same thing for administering headless servers without needing to BYOM or locate a crash cart. I recently bought a VGA2USB adapter for my laptop from epiphan and it works great for that purpose albeit I'm still stuck using a regular laptop. I was thinking maybe someone can write an App for the ipad that could use the camera connection kits usb port to connect to the epiphan hardware. Startech also makes one similar to that. Links to both are posted below (I hope) (ok..since i just registered i can't post links.. just google USB2VGA for epiphan and NOTECONS01 for startech) :P

Any software writers feel like chiming in if thats possible or not?

Doug-

I too have been looking at the video input problem/solution. If you convert the video with one of these;
(I can't post links. Google: axis M7001 H.263 single channel converter.)
It converts raw video to IP based video, you should be able to use the Ipad to view nearly live video? Using a WIFI adapter with the output would even make it wireless if you want to. They're not cheap though (about $300). Almost the price of the Ipad. But for my application I may bite the bullet?

Why do you have to use the iPad as a monitor? There is really no other way you can do it?

Running a gimbal mounted camera in an aircraft I can run the joystick controller with the Ipad touch screen, watch & record video & run other aircraft mapping apps all with the Ipad. Using a laptop is not nearly as friendly, besides the cool Ipad apps. Space in the cockpit is a premium. Having a monitor, joystick controller, recording device & a laptop to run other mapping apps takes room I don't have. If the Ipad had a video input my search for a solution would already be over.

If you guys don't know the answer, don't bother wasting your time replying.