Help Traveling with Movies

Briggsy230

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I also posted this in the "Multimedia/Audio" subforum but not sure if that was the right place for it, so I'm trying here - please redict if needed.

Traveling with my family (including 2 kids) in a few weeks. We are heading to areas where Wi-Fi and internet in general may be spotty at best.

I have a fantastic media library of movies and TV shows. But we need to travel light. I'd like my kids to travel with their iPads only. Is there such a thing as a reliable portable wireless media drive that they can connect their iPads to over a Wi-Fi connection and access (and Play!) a bunch of media files? I'm thinking about this for long plane/train rides. Is this even possible? Can someone point me to hardware and apps that could help with this? Thank you all in advance!
 
Kinda / sorta...
Raspberry Pi 3B+ and a USB external drive. Have it share out a WiFi network that the iPads connect to, then use the VLC app on the iPads to browse the network share.

I do it quite often at home for my SMB shares there, but never on the go. That should actually work pretty well for your use case though.
 
In regards to the Raspberry Pi solution vs an off-the-shelf wireless drive solution, both would cost roughly the same (unless the OP already has a Raspberry Pi, microSD card, 5V power supply, case for Pi and external HD). With the Pi version, he will need to do some manual setup to configure it to do what is desired. With the wireless drive solution, all that's needed is to copy the media files to the drive and fire it up.

Additionally, the wireless drives generally contain a rechargeable battery whereas with the PI, you would need an adapter to convert 12VDC to 5VDC to use it in a car. Additional hardware would be required (external 5VDC rechargeable battery) in order to make the Pi solution portable.

I don't see any advantage to the Pi version (unless the OP already has the parts lying around).
 
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No idea about wireless drives but is there enough space to transfer the movies through iTunes from the computer to the iPad? The movies dont necessarily have to be downloaded from iTunes, they can be added to the Itunes library from the computer then transferred via iTunes.
 
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