Movie-how long to download?

[CMFox]

How long should it take to download a movie to the iPad from iTunes/
My iPad is sitting right next to the wi-fi and its not all that fast.

30 min?
1 hr?
2hrs?

Thanks.
Carla

 

[CMFox]

The reason I am asking because its not in hour 2 and its not close to being downloaded.

I tried to download a movie directly to my iMac and it said it would take 5 hours! Its only a 2 hour movie.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.
CM

 

[CMFox]

Damn, I'm learning more and more each hour. Now I'm answering my own posts.

I called Apple, they said because both my iMac and iPad were downloading a movie very slowly, that it was an isp problem.

Called the isp....
isp: "How big is the file"
me: "3.8gb"
isp: "HD or regular"
me "HD"

isp: "Well you have a download speed of apx 1mb per second, meaning a download of that size will take hours."
me: "oh!"
isp: "You can download at night when the system is less used and/or not download the HD version of the movie. Sounds of him doing the math....yeah...its going to take a while."

So, I'm doing nothing wrong.

But I still have questions. THis all started as I wanted a movie to watch on an airplane. What do other people do?

And should I download directly into my iMac (thinking it will be faster) and then sync that up to my iPad. Or will that sync take forever too.

What is the download procedure the rest of you are doing?

CM
I live in puckerbrush, this is the fasted isp I can get...so changing isp's isn't an option.

 

[Matth3w]

I rip or download all of my movies/TV shows and store them on a 2TB external drive and just sync them before a trip.

 

[Matth3w]

Right now I have 573 TV show episodes and 414 movies on my external drive and in my iTunes library, but my hard drive is only like half full. I have a 1.5TB hard drive (actually it's two running in RAID0) for my regular PC apps, photos etc. I have a 1TB hard drive for backup of my important things. I have a 2TB hard drive full of movies and TV shows in AVI format, and a 2TB hard drive in iPad format.

 

[Purpleorchid]

That's a lot! I guess I'll never reach that amount since I don't own that many DVDs. I only have copies of movies I actually own on DVD. Same with my music.

 

[Matth3w]

Me too

I have three 520 DVD binders in my TV room.

Two for Movies (A-M and N-Z) and one for TV Shows.

 

[monkeyboy]

this is why people like to stream movies. you watch AS the movie is being transferred... no waiting... as you start transferring you might as well watch what youve copied over so far...

also rather than transferring 4gb files you may find that most movies compressed to 800-1000mb has sufficient quality to be perfectly satisfying and wll take one fourth the bandwidth... this is why people transcode...

 

[Purpleorchid]

1500+ DVDs!?! Good golly, Miss Molly! I only have ~150 DVDs and ~400 CDs.

I've ripped only a couple dozen DVDs and maybe half of the CDs.

 

[MikesTooLz]

Download with your PC and then sync to your iPad.

The speed all depends on how fast your internet is. 1hour for one person could take 15 minutes for someone with faster internet.

 

[monkeyboy]

I've standardized on MPEG-1, about 850MB file size since before DVD-R days, when CD-R was the only reasonable writable media. Almost all movies are adequately viewed on laptops at that level of compression and it is VCD compatible, so you can burn a CD-R and play it on most DVD players. These same 850MB files occupy much less space than a DVD rip of 4-8GB and so, for example, my netbook with 160GB disk will hold 100+ movies with room to spare.

At home a 1.5TB drive on a fileserver holds many such movies, and they can be d/l into the iPad, e.g. using FTP, or HTTP-streamed for instant viewing on the iPad, or streamed over the Internet (instead of the local net), for remote viewing as well, as long as the iPad gets a decent connection. Orb can also be used to serve these files up, but that is unnecessary...

For smaller format devices, I down transcode to QVGA (320x240), and the file size goes down to 200-300MB. A 8GB uSD card hold many of these for viewing on my WM devices. But QVGA is a little too crummy for iPad viewing...

 

[CMFox]

this is why people like to stream movies. you watch AS the movie is being transferred... no waiting... as you start transferring you might as well watch what youve copied over so far...

also rather than transferring 4gb files you may find that most movies compressed to 800-1000mb has sufficient quality to be perfectly satisfying and wll take one fourth the bandwidth... this is why people transcode...

I can't stream on an airplane.....

 

[monkeyboy]

I can't stream on an airplane.....

actually that would depend on which airplane (and if you're willing to pay for it...)

but yes, I'm planning another trip to Asia... need to pile in those movies... last time I put most of them on my WM phone... not sure this time... I really don't want to take the iPad (afraid of it getting stolen or damaged)... and none of the other devices have the needed battery life for the long flight, so I'll probably do the WM phone again...

(I always worry about the issue of neighboring passengers getting offended if they can see the movies as well (R rated, probably not family-safe)...

 

[Purpleorchid]

If you need more juice for your device, check out the Just Mobile Gum Pro ($50). It has 4400mAh of juice and a USB port, so you can use your device charging cable with it (as long as it has a USB plug at one end).

I use it to give me extra iPhone or Touch power. It does charge the iPad, but very slowly.

 

[monkeyboy]

If you need more juice for your device, check out the Just Mobile Gum Pro ($50). It has 4400mAh of juice and a USB port, so you can use your device charging cable with it (as long as it has a USB plug at one end).

I use it to give me extra iPhone or Touch power. It does charge the iPad, but very slowly.

thanks... this is clearly the advantage of user-removeable batteries... what I usually do is bring a handful of $5 ebay batteries for the device... something one can't do for Apple devices...