Watching an avi format movie on my iPad?

[smowjoe]

I have a Go Flex Satellite wireless hard drive with avi format movies on it. I downloaded AV HD Player and assumed it would be a simple case of selecting the movie from a file browser and sit back....not so! AV HD Player, OPlayer, AirPlay...I downloaded them all...the same issue seems to be that each app won't browse my satellite hard drive...they just ask for an FTP client or server....I don't know where to start or where to look! Cn anyone give me a simple, idiots guide to get me watching my movies?

 

[wingzfan61]

Try 8player or goodplayer. Not sure how those wifi hdd's handle shared folders but both those apps will play avi from a network share

 

[dvdcatalyst]

I have a Go Flex Satellite wireless hard drive with avi format movies on it. I downloaded AV HD Player and assumed it would be a simple case of selecting the movie from a file browser and sit back....not so! AV HD Player, OPlayer, AirPlay...I downloaded them all...the same issue seems to be that each app won't browse my satellite hard drive...they just ask for an FTP client or server....I don't know where to start or where to look! Cn anyone give me a simple, idiots guide to get me watching my movies?

You either have to use the web interface or the seagate app:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/goflex-media-seagate-technology/id431912202?mt=8

in order to access the GoFlex Satellite.

Unless you mod it to support other access modes, such as samba (making it more into a NAS) or ftp.

I modded mine with Samba support:

Seagate GoFlex Satellite WiFi Samba Modification | Tools4Movies | DVD Catalyst 4

and then most of the video players in the appstore can access it.

 

[smowjoe]

Thank you!

 

[wingzfan61]

.avi is only a container for a variety of codecs, "Motion JPEG" being one of them and mostly used on photo cameras with the ability to shoot video.
.avi files downloaded from the internet most likely use Divx/Xvid as a codec, thus they will not be playable by the iPad.

Avi are absolutely playable on the ipad without conversion. Theres dozens of apps in the app store to do just that. They wont play in the native video app but to say they arent playable is absolutely false.

 

[dvdcatalyst]

There are plenty of avi threads already. The title of the thread is a bit confusing, but the OP is using a GoFlex Satellite Wifi harddrive. The avi file part is not an important part of the question.

I have a Go Flex Satellite wireless hard drive with avi format movies on it.

This WiFi harddrive works a bit different than a standard network drive, and as a result, there are not that many players that can actually connect to it.

Even if the files were in MP4 format, it is still the same.

The GoFlex, when it comes out of the box only has 3 ways of accessing files on it. The web-interface, a USB port and its own iOS (and Android) app.


While there are plenty of video player apps in the AppStore, there are none (to my knowledge) that are actually able to connect to the GoFlex. They offer support for smb/samba network shares, which is the common format, they offer support for ftp and a few other ways, but the GoFlex doesn't have those sharing methods, which makes it a bit tricky to play avi (or any other files) from it.

The GoFlex runs linux, which makes it possible to install additional methods on it. As I mentioned in my previous post, I modded my drive with smb on it, and then it can be accessed by other players.