Going travelling - which tablet/device will be best for kids to watch downloaded films in SE Asia?

[SparklyCRB]

We are going travelling for several weeks in Thailand and Malaysia next year. We will have our 10 and 7 year olds with us and I want to make sure they will have some entertainment on very long bus journeys where there will be no wifi. I am planning to buy some kind of tablet device and download films for them from our Amazon Video account or iPlayer but my research so far makes me worried that I will download loads of content for them and then it will fail to work at the crucial moment due to being in a different country from where we live. Lots of people seem to have this problem. Some people recommend VPNs but I don't know anything about them. Can anyone suggest the most foolproof method for taking films/entertainment with us please? I'm starting to think that their portable DVD player might be the safest option but it's a bit of a heavy brick and won't allow them to do school work etc.
Any advice would be hugely appreciated. TIA.

VPNs are a system that allow you to connect to the internet from one location but pretend to be elsewhere. so if I'm on holiday and want to watch netflix with my UK account, I log on to the hotel internet and it gives me an error message saying 'you can't watch from here'. then I activate my VPN and the computer thinks it is in the UK. And netflix say 'now you can watch your movie'

for downloads, VPNs don't matter at all. if you just get any device with a BIG disk space, then you can download everything you want in the UK and watch anywhere you like.

but you won't be able to download new content (in your hotel) unless you have a VPN.

Ipad with big storage. As above you will only be bale to download before you leave without VPN but they will be able to access games if you are on hotel / accommodation wifi.

We have taken an iPad on holiday before and downloaded shows from iplayer and Netflix before we left. Never been an issue if they're downloaded on your device. As others have said, if you want to download new content, you need a VPN which is pretty straightforward.

You can download content and generally once it's downloaded you can watch it any time, anywhere, BUT.... once you watch it, it often automatically deletes or becomes unavailable after a certain period, usually 48 hours. So if their favourite movie is something you download, once they watch it the first time, they might not be able to watch it for the rest of the trip. So make sure you have a wide variety.

Netflix and, I think, Amazon Prime are the easiest options for still being able to access content in different countries - sometimes the content is slightly different due to licensing, but you can browse and find different things to download if necessary. So you'd log onto your netflix account, but you might be shown different shows/,ovies than what you'd see here. A VPN might work with that - and you can buy something like Nord VPN and use it on a short term basis if you like. But it can be erratic. Disney, for example, never seems to work with a Nord VPN.

My top tip would be to buy a tablet with better storage and a good battery life. That will allow you to download a great deal before you leave and also prevents things dying half way through on a long journey.

You will want a VPN, because on most platforms, downloads expire if you don’t connect to the internet and renew them. Netflix downloads last between a week and a month - I don’t know whether there’s a way to know how long a particular movie will last! If you’re going for a few weeks rather than just a week or two, that’s an issue you’re likely to come up against.

also, make sure you get good headphones and a headphone splitter so two kids can watch 1 ipad with proper headphones.

Thank you all so much for your advice. I knew Mumsnet would be a great source of help. We're probably going for 10 weeks so I think we will hit problems with downloads expiring. I have tried using our Amazon Video abroad before and never had much success but it didn't matter so much when we were only away for a week.
I was also wondering about somehow ripping a load of our DVDs onto an SD card or other storage device so that I am not relying on downloaded content that may or may not work at the key moments. But again, it's not something I know much about...
Headphone splitter is a great idea!
Thank you, everyone.

Netflix definitely is the best for other country use so if you aren't already subscribers, perhaps sign up for the trip? As I said, you might get slightly different content, but at least you can access it.

You can buy a DVD player that you can then use with a tablet or computer - you might need soe kind of adaptor for plugging in. But that could work, although you probably don't want to take too many DVDs.

The other option is also to selectively PAY for certain content (eg the kids' favourite season of their favourite show or specific movies) via a service like Apple TV. That content would then be available to you at any time as you've paid for it