I have found me for the holidays to stream from my external hard drive movies on my iPad. This works wonderfully with DLNA on the TirpMate and VLC on the iPad. To enable DLNA there is an option in the menu.
At home I'm going to TirpMate use to expand the reach of my wifi, which unfortunately is no WLAN amplifier, but a separate WLAN makes for what is not a problem with me.