iPad Pro How can I play an iTunes movie from External Drive?

[teerexx52]

Hello. I have been trying to find out how to download and play an iTunes movie on my iPad from an external drive. I used my computer to download one and transferred it to an external drive. On my ipad pro I can see the movie on the external drive but it won't play. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[ericwn]

What OS version are you on and what app do you use to view the external drive’s contents? What format is the movie in? Is it a purchased one from I tutor something you ripped yourself from a DVD?

 

[teerexx52]

I am using IpadOS and was trying to click on the movie on the external drive from the files app to play it. I am not using any app for this. The movie is a purchased from iTunes. I wanting to load them on my external to play on my iPad where I cannot stream.

 

[AutomaticApple]

I am using IpadOS

Developer beta or public beta?

 

[teerexx52]

Developer beta or public beta?

Public Beta

 

[Apple_Robert]

There is DRM involved. I don’t think it will work playing thru the Files app.

 

[hovscorpion12]

If the movie is purchased from itunes, you can watch the movie on your iPad in the TV app. if your looking to watch via external storage, you may have to wait until iPadOS is officially public. What your experiencing may just be a bug. If DRM is involved, not sure how the movie was able to be downloaded and imported to a HDD.

 

[rui no onna]

If the movie is purchased from itunes, you can watch the movie on your iPad in the TV app. if your looking to watch via external storage, you may have to wait until iPadOS is officially public. What your experiencing may just be a bug. If DRM is involved, not sure how the movie was able to be downloaded and imported to a HDD.

DRM on downloadable content doesn't prevent copying said content to external storage. It just limits playback. With iTunes, you used to be able to download on one device and iirc, the same download will work on other devices as long as they're logged in to the same iTunes account. Don't know when Apple changed their policy.

 

[EugW]

I can’t make DRM’d iTunes movies play back off external USB either. This was with iPadOS 13 public beta 4 or something like that.

Even if I copied the files from the external USB drive to a directory on the iPad, it still wouldn’t work.

 

[rui no onna]

I can’t make DRM’d iTunes movies play back off external USB either. This was with iPadOS 13 public beta 4 or something like that.

Even if I copied the files from the external USB drive to a directory on the iPad, it still wouldn’t work.

That's because nowadays, DRM'd iTunes videos are only playable on the device you downloaded them to. This is how Kindle ebooks work as well (tied to the device).

iTunes probably does something extra when transferring videos to iPad via USB to make them playable.

 

[teerexx52]

I was hoping to download DRM’d movies from iTunes to external storage and play them on my ipad. The purpose being to save storage space on the ipad itself. Was excited to think this might be possible with IPadOS but apparently it isn’t. Thanks everyone for the responses.

 

[rui no onna]

I was hoping to download DRM’d movies from iTunes to external storage and play them on my ipad. The purpose being to save storage space on the ipad itself. Was excited to think this might be possible with IPadOS but apparently it isn’t. Thanks everyone for the responses.

Submit a feature request to Apple to allow downloading/offloading iTunes videos to external USB storage. The download likely must be performed on the iOS device itself but being able to offload should be a big help.

Also, do you have Movies Anywhere linked to multiple providers? Most of my iTunes movies transfer over to Amazon and Vudu. Even if Apple doesn't allow USB offloading, somewhere down the lines, other providers might.

Anytime there's DRM, playback options are often limited. I rip from Blu-ray myself and convert. Infuse handles a lot of formats beautifully (even non-recompressed UHD Blu-ray MKV rips with original audio). On a 12.9" iPad, the higher resolution of UHD was more noticeable than expected and HDR is something one can easily appreciate even on the smaller Pro 10.5/11 (perhaps on Pro 9.7 as well with DCI-P3).

My current PCs are too slow for 4K. Maybe I'll build a new one capable of hardware-assisted decoding and encoding of 4K HEVC. For now, I'm just using full quality rips which are gigantic (50GB minimum). Surprised my wifi actually handled the streaming. I really need to get the USB3 CCK.

 

[EugW]

Submit a feature request to Apple to allow downloading/offloading iTunes videos to external USB storage. The download likely must be performed on the iOS device itself but being able to offload should be a big help.

Also, do you have Movies Anywhere linked to multiple providers? Most of my iTunes movies transfer over to Amazon and Vudu. Even if Apple doesn't allow USB offloading, somewhere down the lines, other providers might.

Anytime there's DRM, playback options are often limited. I rip from Blu-ray myself and convert. Infuse handles a lot of formats beautifully (even non-recompressed UHD Blu-ray MKV rips with original audio). On a 12.9" iPad, the higher resolution of UHD was more noticeable than expected and HDR is something one can easily appreciate even on the smaller Pro 10.5/11 (perhaps on Pro 9.7 as well with DCI-P3).

My current PCs are too slow for 4K. Maybe I'll build a new one capable of hardware-assisted decoding and encoding of 4K HEVC. For now, I'm just using full quality rips which are gigantic (50GB minimum). Surprised my wifi actually handled the streaming. I really need to get the USB3 CCK.

All you need to do to play 4K on your PC is to update your GPU.

Or you can just get something like a 2017 Core i3.

 

[Klatti]

There’s a little program which removes the DRM protection of any iTunes movie/ tv show without any problem. I’ve been using it for 3 years now to fill up my Plex library. It costs about 20€, but totally worth it. You can easily find it by google. Not sure how legal it is, so I won’t say the whole name. It’s called Tune[...]it

 

[rui no onna]

All you need to do to play 4K on your PC is to update your GPU.

Or you can just get something like a 2017 Core i3.

Currently have laptop, USFF and Thin Mini-ITX builds on Haswell or older. No space for GPU and socket/platform is too old for drop-in CPU replacement so need a complete system upgrade.

Currently looking at these options:

ASRock DeskMini A300 + Ryzen 3 3200G.

Quad-core i5/i7 Bean Canyon NUC or even Hades Canyon if a similar sale to Prime Day pops up. Or maybe wait for the new NUCs. Intel SGX is a requirement for official UHD Blu-ray disc playback (PowerDVD).

+ 32GB DDR4 SO-DIMM + Intel 660p 2TB + Win 10 Pro

I'll probably end up building both. The Ryzen now and wait for Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales on Intel. Combined cost of both builds would still be cheaper than a top of the line iPad Pro even before accessories.