Recommend me a 'doobery'

Good evening all,

I need at item which is essentially a hard drive with the ability to create it's own wifi network. I need to be able to store a wide selection of video formats on the HDD and for them to be playable on an iPad through the AV Player app. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/avplayer/id395680819?mt=8

AV Player has options to download files to the iPad viia FTP, WebDAV and DLNA.

The whole thing needs to be user friendly from the point of view of a 70 year old non-techie.

Thanks in advance!

If, by "iPad", you actually mean everything works entirely in the Apple ecosystem, then I think you're looking for an Apple Airport Extreme, into which you plug in an external USB hard drive. There is also the AirPort Time Capsule, which is essentially the same thing but with a hard drive built in.

If it has to work in other ecosystems (Windows PCs, android phones, etc), then I'm not sure how well the Apple-centric AirPort will work. For instance you mention FTP, WebDAV, and DLNA, and I'm not sure the AirPort Extreme does that. But it will be super simple to set up and it will work perfectly with the iPad.

I personally do this via a Synology NAS connected to an existing network, and the network is accessible via WiFi. But that is a more complex setup, which doesn't fit your "70 year old non-techie" requirement.

Thanks Tony. Yes, it's solely for an iPad and I knew of that item's existance but I'm unsure if non-native video formats will work. AV Player plays pretty much everything you throw at it. Thats why the FTP, Web-DAV and DLNA appeal to me.

I will research this further.

And AirPort isn't going to do anything useful in this situation, pretty much the only interaction you can get going between an iPad and the AirPort is a wifi connection.

You need something like this:

http://www.hypershop.com/products/iusbport-hd

or one of the mainstream wifi drives like the Seagate and use something like this:

http://www.hackseagatesatellite.com/wordpress/version-3/

N.B. this isn't a recommendation of either approach, I've not personally used either of them

Phil, will there be any internet access, or desire for internet access with this setup? And who will be managing the video files available?

I've got some ideas here, and will look to check out the specific app you linked. Is that app a specific requirement, or something in general that can handle various video codecs and containers?

Hi Tom,

Thanks for that. I would appreciate any help.

My Father-in-Law will be in a motorhome; there is no internet access other than the very small possibility of some slow wifi at the site in France. Nothing that could be relied on or guaranteed.

I planned to setup all of the files (all legal!) before he leaves on an external source as his iPad only has a 16GB capacity.

The app isn't a specific requirement, but I know it works very very well.

I stupidly thought that this would be an off the shelf item and I'd be spoilt for choice. Oops!

That second link has a feature list beginning with ...

Looks like they have continued to develop newer versions .

It appears from reading the tech specs of one of the Segate Wireless Drives, it supports DNLA out of the box http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/external-hard-drives/portable-hard-drives/wireless/wireless-plus/

This does all I need, yes?

Would Plex be a solution here to make it easy to use? Once you find something that can run a Plex server that is? A single bay NAS?

You mention a motorhome. Does it need to be power efficient? Always on? 12/24VDC supply?

That Seagate drive looks perfect for this scenario. As long as it uses standard DLNA, you will have a lot of various apps that can work with it beyond their Seagate app. This includes the VLC for iOS App here: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ios.html

And just because I prefer WD to Seagate, I'll offer up this drive. It does DLNA too.

Just to update this. I bought the Seagate Wireless Plus. Works like a charm right out of the box.