Shared account for films etc
Stephen Flynn
Hi all
Working in an iPad school with Apple TV’s in each room.
Different departments are looking for shared account for buying of films etc. with the account managed and paid for by the school. We have OneDrive accounts but obviously paying for the films etc we won’t be able to upload to there.
Apple is obviously the easiest but will only allow you to sign in on so many devices.
Has anyone used anything else they found easy and able to be used on a large number of devices without constant need of signing in and out?(Apple TV’s in this case !)
Thanks
Stephen
Regards
Stephen
Chris Reina
Hi Stephen,
An interesting question.
The quick answer I think is "no".
Mostly due to licensing of movies from film studios both nationally and internationally.
However... there is always a solution.
It may be convoluted of course...
You mention OneDrive - while I don't use it myself, I believe if a movie were uploaded to a shared folder there, anyone with access could "stream" [locally] to their devices in class. (Even concurrently)
I know this can be done from Google Drive as I have set this up successfully myself.
Plex is another solution for streaming locally - but is a paid for solution.
The other option is to set up a NAS (Network Attached Storage) on your network.
This will also allow you to "stream" movies [locally] from a single device.
Either of these solutions do require you to have the movie copied locally.
The excellent Handbrake can facilitate this:
I have long advocated to schools to download their resources from YouTube, Vimeo, etc. and store them locally on their network.
I understand it's easier to just click a link, but the bandwidth it takes up to do this (especially if every teacher is doing it on a rainy day!) is huge.
In turn, this can lead to clogged network, slow connections,
etc... and if it's over Wifi...
I am not of course advocating stealing from dodgy sites (which I won't mention here, but can be found easily enough).
If you purchase the DVD, then use Handbrake to make a copy however... you should be good to go.
Happy to chat further to go through the process if you like Stephen.
Cheers!
Chris