No, the Seagate provides its own wireless network. You just have the iPad join to that and then you can stream. You can also setup authentication so that only you can connect to it. Imagine the Seagate is an access point, and that only you know the password to it.

I've used it with me sitting in F and streaming to my iPad while a non-status friend of mine in row 15 also streamed to his iPad. Not sure what the range is on it, but I don't think it'd reach much farther that that.

You cannot turn it on until they tell you that you can turn on electonics, but thats not a big deal since you can't turn on the iPad until then anyways.