Solid Internet connections aren’t available everywhere. If you want to watch streaming movies and TV shows on an airplane, on the subway, or somewhere out in the wilderness away from cellular towers, you can download them ahead of time.
Not every service offers a download feature, but quite a few services allow you to download videos ahead of time so you can take them with you. This could save lots of valuable cellular data, too, especially if you’re roaming internationally. Let’s take a look at some of your options.
YouTube Red
YouTube offers this feature, but only if you pay for YouTube Red (which actually isn’t a bad deal if you use Google Play Music, which is included–you get both Google Play Music’s music library as well as YouTube Red for the same price you’d pay for Spotify or Apple Music.)
To download a video, open the YouTube app on an iPhone, iPad, or Android device and tap the menu button next to a video. Tap “Save Offline” and you’ll be prompted to choose which resolution you want to download the video in. Higher resolutions offer a better quality video, but take more space on your device.
You’ll find the videos you saved for offline use under the profile tab. Tap “Offline Videos” and you’ll see a list of videos you can watch offline.
This feature is only available in the YouTube app for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. You can’t do this from the YouTube website, so you can’t do it on a laptop.
Video Rentals and Purchases
You have quite a few options here, including:
iTunes (Windows, Mac, iOS): Apple’s iTunes is available for Windows and included on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It allows you to rent movies, purchase individual episodes or entire seasons of TV shows, or purchase movies. If you choose to rent a movie, you’ll have thirty days to start watching it. After you start watching it, you’ll have 24 hours to finish. if you plan on going for a trip, you can rent several movies from iTunes, download them to your Windows PC, Mac, iPhone, or iPad and get around to watching them any time within 30 days without an Internet connection. If you purchase an episode of a TV show or entire movie, you can download it and watch it whenever you want with no expiration.
Google Play Movies & TV (Android, iOS, Chrome OS): On Android devices, the Google Play Movies & TV app provides rentals of movie and TV shows. The Google Play Movies & TV app is also available on iPhone and iPad, and both platforms allow you to download videos offline and watch them in the app. Google offers a Google Play Movies & TV Chrome app that allows you to download and watch videos offline, but this feature only works on Chromebooks. It’s the only option for Chrome OS devices.
Rip Your Own DVDs or Blu-rays
RELATED: Convert DVD to MP4 / H.264 with HD Decrypter and Handbrake
Lastly, if you have movies or TV shows on physical DVD or Blu-ray discs, you can “rip” them to digital video files you can more easily take with you. Store these files on a laptop, smartphone, or tablet and you can watch them without taking the disc with you.
You can rip DVDs and Blu-rays with a variety of programs, but we particularly like Handbrake–it’s free, and contains presets for ripping files compatible with iPhone, iPad, Android, and more.
Image Credit: Ulrika
