MicroSD card (for the PI operating system - I used 16GB).

USB drive (any size that can fit the media you have).

Raspberry Pi Model 3B (but Model 2 will also work - would just need a Wifi adapter).

Fixed some minor issues in a few commands and added the dos2unix tool to help make the 2 copied files work in linux.

Update - recent improvements (29 March 2018): Unfortunately, if you plug the drive in when Pi is powered, it requires a restart.

It now also detects the first available USB drive at startup and uses that as the default for the media drive.

This is just because I could not get the notify functions in minidlna working.

I now use a script to rebuild the database media files indexes at startup.

Update - recent improvements (8 December 2016): To avoid using another mobile WiFi router, I would also want to set the Pi up as an access point. So I thought, what if I can use my Raspberry Pi as a media server (similar to my NAS at home) and then stream content to their iPads (and any other device for that matter).

Even if charged, you could hardly get through 2 movies with one charge. But this was a nightmare to manage and keep things charged.

In the beginning I bought them small Android tablets just for in-car entertainment. But Apple does not afford you the luxury of adding the option of SD cards and the iPads are so full of games, there is hardly space for movies while we go on a long road trip. Both my kids unfortunately have an iPad mini 16GB. The reason for creating this project in the first place was because I hate Apple.

Pi media server