An owner of my iPad tutorial app named Doug Brown sent the following question in via the “Ask iPad Question” feature of the app:

“It’s taking many hours to download movies to my iPad! Is that normal? Am I doing something wrong? Thanks. “

 

Hi Doug, I’d like to help with your question, but I need a few more details.

First off, are you talking about movies you’ve purchased through the iTunes app? The files can be quite large and normally will take a little while to download.

Also, are you trying to get several movies at once? If so, you may be causing a “traffic jam” by trying to get too many at once.

Are you doing this on WiFi, or do you have a 3G iPad and are trying to download over the cell phone 3G network?

WiFi is *much* faster, and you should also try to avoid downloading a lot over 3G because the cell companies often hit you with extra fees if you do (they’re very stingy).

You can see if you’re using WiFi by going to the home screen (where all the icons are) and looking at the top of the screen on the left side — if you’re connected to WiFi you’ll see a kind of radio wave icon (curved lines like a cartoon drawing of a radio wave).

If you need help learning how to connect to WiFi then go into my tutorial app and go to iPad Lessons, then go to iPad Settings, and  look for “Settings: Wi-Fi: Connecting” for a lesson on how to do that.

But overall, downloading a bunch of videos at the same time can be expected to take a while, and in my own experience when connected to a decent speed Internet connection via WiFi it can easily take 20 minutes or more to download a single movie.

The speed depends on how fast the Internet connection you’re using is, and how much it’s being used at that moment (including what you’re doing on the iPad, but also what other people on the network may be doing too if it’s a shared connection).

Let me know if that helps and if you have further questions, and thanks for being a student!

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downloading videos on ipad · ipad questions · ipad tips · ipad tutorial app