Downloading Movies to PC for offline veiwing

[Zulu]

We've been doing short run RV'ing for a year in hope of someday taking a year off to RV. We have a TV with all the right jacks but have never figured out how to download movies and TV's to my PC laptop to play on the TV without internet. All the big players (Amazon, Netflix, Hulu etc etc) have mechanisms to play movies offline on iphones, ipads and android devices (none of which have HDMI outputs to go to TV). I'm not looking to get things for free. I dont want to use DVD's. I just dont want to have to watch movies on an ipad when we have a nice big TV at the foot of the bed.

 

Well, if you want to use an iPad, then you just need an HDMI adapter connected between an iPad and a TV. That's it.

 

If you want to get movies into an iPad (without using iTunes), get iTools Pro.

[Technomadia]

There are a couple of streaming services that have enabled offline downloading of some content.

 

• Amazon Prime (More Info: Amazon Prime Instant Video Now Offers Offline Content)
• Starz TV (Premium STARZ TV Service Launches Stand-Alone App with Download Ability).
• YouTube Red subscribers have this ability.

 

Other than that, the rest of the online video content services are streaming only. Although there are workarounds as mentioned in this thread (NightShift is another one to add to the list).

 

And indeed, a simple Lightening to HDMI cable will allows you to watch content on your iPad/iPhone on a TV screen.

 

- Cherie

[RV_]

I believe that you are only allowed to download one video at a time from Amazon. You must return it before downloading another is allowed. Soon there will be no more gently used or playable DVDs and BluRay movies for sale at yard sales and pawn shops/thrift shops (Goodwill) as I am seeing the supply locally dwindle. Having a BluRay player and lots of disks in the disk storage binders is the easiest way - One binder holds from 250-400 disks in a tiny space.

 

Or rip them to a hard drive and any Mac, iPad, Windows tablet, Android tablet or Windows laptop/computer can cast it to the TV, or run an HDMI to the TV. Check out your TV direct play options from external USB drives and what format it plays if it does play. Some TVs will play media directly from a Hard drive or thumb drive if they are in a format they specify.

 

I stream now but save content bought used weekly. When there are a lot of DVDs or BluRay disks I want I will offer a bulk price and have gotten them for as little as 50 cents each. Even the ones that are lightly scratched play, and I even took a chance on some bad looking ones that play fine. They had a half price sale yesterday and I bought three music CDs that I did not have, a Santana album "Shaman," a Wilson Phillips album, and a great Story of the Clash collection.

 

I'm still looking for a Georgia Satellites album on CD that I gave away twenty years ago and wish I had not.

 

There are lots of direct from Hard drive to TV players available if your TV wiull not play when connected directly here are some examples: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=media+player+hard+drive+to+tv+HDMI&rh=n%3A172282%2Ck%3Amedia+player+hard+drive+to+tv+HDMI

[Yarome]

Just a word of caution on the subject of ripping rental media. The "legal" programs available to make digital backups of media that you personally own is perfectly fine, HOWEVER, ripping a rental for later viewing, even for personal use and with no monetary gain IS illegal. The gray area is that you 'can' legally rip it to your hard drive for viewing during the term of the rental period, but once the rental term has expired, so has your viewing/listening privileges.

 

I would be very cautious about sharing the fact that it's your practice to do so in a public forum.

[jerryneal]

X2 on ripping rentals. Also stay away from the bit torrent sites. They're loaded with illegally ripped DVDs, plus you'll never know when you'll download a file with a wicked virus.

[Yarome]

I wasn't entirely sure and wanted to do some checking, but time shift laws apply to general/public broadcast media from entities licensed to do so (TV, podcasts, and the like), which is legal to record and replay for personal use, but does not apply to rented media (DVD's, games, music, etc.). Once the rental period/agreement expires, so has the right to maintain copies in any form.

 

To each their own, but just for clarification.

[Ray,IN]

I just checked and I see a lot of recent negative reviews about the Amazon Video app. You will want to make sure that it runs on your Android device (that also has HDMI out) before you sink a lot of money into this.

 

Also, this is off topic and I know you don't want to use DVD's but we have discovered that many pawn shops sell DVD's for $1 each. We have built up a library and fall back on that when we have no internet.

We do the same. We also "take one-leave one" at RV park libraries if we can find one we haven't seen. I also copy movies from our Dish service to see later in the MH. I'd never overload an RV park WiFi by trying to stream or download movies, it's rude and inconsiderate IMO.