questions about an ipad

Hello,

i've been using the iphone since the 3G, and i have a macbook pro mid 2009, but now i'm thinking about buying the new ipad, since i'm staying in the us for a few weeks (i'm from europe) and with the dollar/euro conversion would be much cheaper. i have however come questions...

- do you guys think that it's necessary to buy one of those expensive cases with bt keyboard? or the keyboard on screen is good enough (i'm very used to write texts and short emails from my iphone)?

- i use to download a lot of tv shows from my macbook and plug it into my tv to watch them. is the ipad of any use here?

- if i want to watch tv shows or movies from the ipad, do i still need to have a conversion program, or there are alternatives for the ipad in order to watch movies without having to spend so much time converting the movie into an ipad format?

the final question is.. do apple do any kind of discounts on memorial day (this weekend)?

thanks a lot for your answers.

 

Thanks for your answer Assimilated. One more question:

when you type using an external keyboard (like the on in logitech), does the inscreen-keyboard still displays, or it disappears to have more free space?

on the other hand, is AVPlayerHD available without JB?