Still sold out nearly everywhere, the VTech InnoTab Learning Tablet has quickly become one of the most popular learning devices on the market. Aside from using the educational game cartridges, it is also capable of playing movies.
Unfortunately, to get movies to play on the InnoTab you need a special media format converter in order to be able to put your own DVDs and video files onto it.
To make it as easy as possible for you to be able to put your own movies on the InnoTab, we picked one up, and spend some time with it to get everything working for you.
What you need:
* Of course your VTech InnoTab (with working batteries in it)
* The (included with the Tab) USB cable that came with the InnoTab.
* An SD memorycard that works with your InnoTab. Movies take up about 500-600 MB, so if you pick up a cheap ($5) 4GB SD card from the store, you can fit about 15 movies on it.
* A Windows-based (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7) computer with access to your movies. If you want to convert DVDs, this means that your computer needs to have a DVD drive. If you want to convert video files (AVI, MKV, MPEG etc) the files need to be stored on your computer.
Setting things up:
* In order to be able to put movies on your InnoTab, you need to install the free VTech Learning Lodge Navigator application. This program connects to the InnoTab, and lets you monitor progress of your child with the various educational games, but it also enables you to copy pictures and movies from and to the tablet.
- visit http://www.vtechkids.com/brands/brand_view/innotab on your computer (just tap on the link)
- then on the left side, look for the Downloads, and tap on that:
- In there, tap on the PC Download option:
- After the download of the file is completed, look for it on your computer (its called “InnoTab_US_Eng_Setup” and should be located in your Documents or Downloads folder, or maybe on your Desktop on your computer)
and Double-click on it to start the installation.
- Just work yourself through the installer like you do with all other programs you might have installed on your computer.
- Once complete, find the program in your Windows Start Menu (Start > All Programs > VTech > Learning Lodge Navigator)
- The VTech software will ask for a setup for your child when you first connect it, I would suggest to connect your InnoTab to your computer at this point, and turn it on. Make sure you have the SD card you want to use for your videos in the InnoTab (its located underneath the battery-cover). Then follow the instructions on setting up a parent account, and add your child to the InnoTab.
After that, tap on the Center image, where your childs name is displayed.
Then on the left side, tap on File Manager:
This will set up the special folder names on the SD card that the VTech InnoTab needs in order to find your movies.
- After you have completed this, you can disconnect your InnoTab (turn it off to save battery power), and close the Learning Lodge Navigator application.
Next the setup of the media format converter for the VTech InnoTab.
DVD Catalyst 4 is the software program that makes the process of putting DVDs and movies on just about any video player device on the planet as easy as possible. You can purchase DVD Catalyst 4 by clicking here (link) for only $10, or download the free trial version by clicking here (link) Note: the trial version converts 25% of each item.
If you purchased DVD Catalyst 4 you should have received a download link by email pretty much within minutes. If not, check your spam/junk mail filter and see if it ended up in there.
After downloading either the trial or the retail version of DVD Catalyst 4, look for the downloaded file on your computer. Usually your computer downloads files to your Documents folder or your Downloads folder, but some people store their downloads on their Desktop.
After you find the downloaded file, right-click on it, and select Extract All:
The download is in ZIP-format, which is a file-type that has been standard in Windows since Windows XP was released over 10 years ago. If you installed another other program on your computer that support ZIP, such as WinZIP or WinRAR, and never actually purchased it you might encounter a message about the software being expired and that you need to purchase it. If you run into this, simply uninstall that program, or download the free 7-zip program to replace it. You can download 7-Zip from here.
If you installed 7-Zip, the right-click menu will have 7-Zip mentioned in it. Select that, then select “Extract here”:
You should have a file that looks like this (the numbering might be different by the time you read this, since DVD Catalyst 4 gets updated with new features quite often). For the VTech InnoTab, it needs to show at least version dc4.1.3.0 or anything higher than that.
Double-(left)-click on that to start the installer:
NOTE: At the last screen, uncheck the 2 checkmarks. The Getting Started checkmark will take you to a more generic guide, and since you are following this guide, there is no need for that.
Before you start DVD Catalyst, make sure there is no DVD in the drive. While it doesn’t make much of a difference, it is easier to start DVD Catalyst first for your first conversion.
Find the shortcut for DVD Catalyst 4 on your desktop:
and double-(left)-click on it to start the program:
It will show a splash screen for a few seconds (might take a little longer if you are using an older computer), after which it will start the program:
Using the dropdowns on the left, select VTech (where it shows “Android”) and then InnoTab, or InnoTab HQ:
And that is it for the setup.
VTech Innotab media format converter process:
With DVD Catalyst 4 still open, insert the DVD you want to convert for your InnoTab into your computer. If any other program, such as a DVD player, Windows Media Player or something similar starts playing the DVD, close it. DVD Catalyst 4 will briefly scan the DVD. If another program is accessing the DVD at the same time, it can cause complications.
If you don’t have a DVD, or would rather convert video files, simply drag them over onto DVD Catalyst 4. Common video files such as AVI, MKV, MPEG can be converted.
Important note: If you have movie/tv files purchased through iTunes or Amazon, or so-called “Digital Copy” (info) movies (the ones that you get for free with some Bluray and DVD movie purchases with some code in the box you have to enter on a website ) can not be converted.
For the purpose of this guide we will use the Rio DVD.
After you insert the DVD, DVD Catalyst will briefly scan the DVD and then display the movie.
With some movies, you might see additional listings, either additional versions of the movie, or things like special features. If you insert a DVD with TV episodes on it, DVD Catalyst 4 will often display the additional episodes on the DVD.
Note:
If you see something like this:
Please have a look at the “Problem DVD” list to see if there are special instructions for your DVD. Especially Disney-released movies can be a little tricky. They can be converted, but some of them require a few extra steps unfortunately.
Now with Rio displayed in DVD Catalyst 4, you see some basic information about the movie.
DVD Catalyst 4 estimates that the created video file for your InnoTab will end up as 523MB in size.
Now simply start the media format conversion process by tapping the “Go” button.
and DVD Catalyst will start the conversion process:
Depending on the speed of your computer, this can take a while. DVD Catalyst 4 uses whatever power your computer has available to speed up the conversion process, so if you have a fast computer it will take only a couple of minutes, but if you use an older computer it can take an hour or 2, depending on the length of the movie.
After the conversion is complete, DVD Catalyst 4 will eject the DVD, and open the location of where it stored the movie:
Leave this open and connect your VTech InnoTab tablet to your computer with the USB cable and turn it on.
Note: You can use the Learning Lodge Navigator application to copy video files, however, it is more picky with video files than that the actual InnoTab is. Because of this, we recommend manually copying the files over to your InnoTab’s SD card. Files created by DVD Catalyst 4 will play fine on the InnoTab, but the Learning Lodge Navigator can think that they do not.
Now open a new “My Computer” window (Click on Windows Start > My Computer, or doubleclick on the “My Computer” icon on your desktop if you have it there)
Now look for your SD card, and double-click on it
It should display the LLN folder. If you don’t see this folder, start up the Learning Lodge Navigator, and go into the File Manager part of the program as mentioned near the top of this guide.
Now doubleclick on the LLN folder:
and you should see the “MOVIE” folder. Doubleclick on that:
Now bring up the folder DVD Catalyst 4 opened up for you with the created video file and drag (leftclick and hold) the movie file over to an empty location in the MOVIE folder on the InnoTab’s SD card:
then let go of the left mouse button, and Windows will start copying the file over:
and that is it.
Once the copying is completed, disconnect the VTech InnoTab from your computer, and you (or your child) are ready to watch the movie you just put on it.
On the InnoTab, select “Videos”:
Then tap on your video file that is displayed there:
and the movie will play:
The guide appears to be quite long, but once you have read it and followed it once or twice, you will notice that its all pretty easy. In short, this is what what we did in order to get a full movie to play on the InnoTab:
1. Connected the InnoTab with a new SD card in it to toe computer with the USB cable.
2. installed and ran the VTech Learning Lodge Navigator application, and went into the File Manager portion to have it set up the SD card.
3. used the DVD Catalyst 4 media format converter to convert a DVD movie (Rio) to a file that is specifically optimized for the VTech InnoTab.
4. Copied the video file to the InnoTab’s SD card in the proper MOVIE folder
5. Disconnected the InnoTab to watch the movie.
Easy 
