How to watch movies, play games, & more on the road

When we’re not wrestling bears, jumping off cliffs, or getting the perfect bikini shot for our Instagram feed, we like to kick back and watch the occasional movie. There’s a plethora of ways to watch films in your build, whether it’s on your phone, your laptop, a portable DVD player, or even possibly on that 87” screen that takes up an entire wall of your build. For us, we wanted something that felt like we were watching a movie at “home” and we didn’t want to pay through the nose for it.

We wanted to use items from our home in order to save money on our new entertainment setup. We had a number of various speakers, cables, etc around the house and we wanted to design a system that used as many of them as possible. Pre-owned items are noted below.

LED Monitor with Soundlink Mini in a custom framed box

Our system all starts with our on board WiFi system. Having WiFi allows us to stream movies and music (as well as not get fired from our day jobs) without having to be connected via data cable to our router or killing our phone data via hotspot. The WiFi is picked up by our Roku Streaming Stick, which we use to manage our various online services. Currently, we have subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Sling (We’ll discuss our decision to go with Sling in another post).

Audio Extractor, Roku Stick. and Monitor power brick attached to the back of the frame

Bose Soundlink Mini with 3.5mm cable and power cord (velcro strap attachment)

The Roku Streaming Stick is plugged into an HDMI audio extractor that separates the Audio and Video signals into two outputs. The video output is HDMI and the HDMI cable plugs directly into our low energy Acer LED Monitor that we brought from our home. The audio side of the extractor is a 3.5mm jack (also comes with RCA and optical outs) that we’ve connected to our Bose Soundlink Mini (which we already owned but is discontinued - we can recommend the JBL Flip 5). This is all a moot point if you have a monitor or TV with good sound, but our monitor sound is not great. If your monitor/TV has good speakers, then you’d just plug the Roku Streaming Stick directly into the HDMI input and it will supply audio and video to your unit. We built a custom frame for our Acer LED Monitor and attached it to an articulating mount that allows us to view the monitor from anywhere in the van (even in the bathroom!!!).

We have a few other items that complete our entertainment setup. We have Bose Companion 2 Series III Multimedia Speakers (brought from home) that are built in above our bed that connect to devices that are not bluetooth ready. We like these speakers a lot, as they are much louder than the Bose Soundlink Mini and the quality of the sound is slightly better. We can attach any device that uses as a 3.5mm jack. We also have an APEMAN M400 Mini Portable Projector for watching movies outside when the weather is just right and we want to eat Impossible burgers and drink cold beers with the fireflies while watching a nature documentary (you can plug the Roku Streaming Stick directly into the projector). Our Awning Hack sunshade serves as our outdoor movie screen. We also brought along our Google Nest Mini (brought from home) that we use for streaming Spotify, listening to news in the morning, setting timers, the occasional bad joke, and adding items to our grocery list. Lastly, we have LED RGB colored light strips for setting the mood for various movie genres that are mounted on the top of our cabinets.

We like our setup for a few reasons. We love that we’re able to reuse quality items from our home to save money. We also like that the Bose Soundlink Mini has blue tooth (so does the JBL Flip 5), so we can use it with our phones for music or assign it as our default speaker for our Google Nest Mini - which has a much richer sound then the stock speaker of the Nest Mini. Lastly, the 23.8” LED monitor feels big in our van and gives us that “snuggling on the couch at home and watching a good movie” feel. Success!