Although iTunes allow you to save movies to local, it's still restricted by DRM, that's why the movies you purchased are no longer available once you switch your account to another region. The once-and-for-all solution is using a third-party software to output it to an drm-free video file that you can play on any device. You can check: https://www.dumpmedia.com/apple-music-converter/itunes-movie-wont-play.html
Agree wholeheartedly! I was blown away by the visual and audio quality of each show and film on Apple TV+. Not only that, it's one platform that has shows and films that are narratively excellent (coincidentally I wrote on that here: https://whenhopewrites.substack.com/p/best-tv-shows-on-apple-tv-with-immersive). I decided to keep investing in that one streaming platform over other ones for these reasons.
Great read. I tend to only busy physical for my favorite films, and digital (iTunes when possible) for everything else. As you said, I can't tell the difference between HD digital and Blu-ray. I've never thought about backing them up before, and I happen to have a 2 TB HDD just sitting around... :)
Thanks! I love the discs. But at a certain point, keeping them all and the boxes becomes a burden. Backing up the data to an external drive is much easier.
And yeah, the 'quality' can be really negligible. Like, I get the leap from VHS to DVD. But HD Digital and Blu-Ray don't have a significant gap. Neither does HD and 4k, imo. Which is why I'm hoping they're gonna slow down the ad infinitum raising of the quality ceiling with digital remasters.
If you want to play your favorite iTunes movies and shows on other devices such as Android phones, Plex media servers, or smart TVs, the most important thing you need to do is remove DRM from iTunes movies.
It looks like Apple hasn't enabled the downloading of the ATMOS soundtrack for iTunes movies yet? At each step, the option to get the highest quality ends up being the streaming version. Want HDR? Must be streamed. Want ATMOS? Must be streamed. Want 4K, must be be streamed.
In other words, as the Apple movies store has added features over the past decade, even single one of those new features has not been part of the "download and save offline for unlimited local life" option. (And I agree, this feature is very cool and a differentiator in the marketplace.)
In fact, not only have all the new features not been part of the download option, but as this article notes, previously available features in the download ecosystem like extras are no longer part of it.
In other words, new features are not added to downloads and old features are removed.
And the only competition is in another price category (https://www.kaleidescape.com). Thought as one example of how to do the quality aspect right, and that licensing is not a problem, they are a great example.
I predict the demise of this functionality in the next year or three, which is unfortunate, since at this point you can store hundreds of movies onto a hard drive costing far less than $1 per movie. Heck even if they were the 4k ATMOS enabled downloads, those are still just 10 to 20 gigs each and fully manageable.
I think that's an interesting take. It's certainly possible, but I do think the data size could be a key issue. 10-20 GB is still a lot more data than 5GB and I do believe extras were removed from downloads because the sizes of the files ballooned to 25 GB.
Hypothetically, the lack of ATMOS downloads could also be a means to promote the Apple TV 4K device sales, which as I understand it, have better functionality with ATMOS than Macbooks, but tbh I don't enough about the subject.
I certainly hope they DON'T remove the download option, in any case.
iTunes movies is great but lacking some key stuff.
1. No 4k uhd downloads is appalling at this point.
2. Some studios that release 4k content like Criterion don’t even make it available to stream.
3. No lossless audio downloads is really annoying on a quality surround sound system.
4. Not just the inability to download “extras” like behind the scenes shorts, but the lack of them from some studios even as an option to stream (Janus Films, as an example) is a real bummer.
At the moment, I don't think offering 4k downloads is feasible for them. I'm pretty sure they cancelled Downloadable Extras due to the sheer amount of space they take up. 4k downloads would probably add a few extra GB of memory.
Regarding extras - it's actually been to my experience that in some cases, Itunes has exclusives that you can't get elsewhere but the opposite is true as well. Janus probably wants to save their extras for the Criterion Channel streaming platform.
I loved your essay but correct me if I'm wrong, you can't download higher than 1080p from Apple TV and once downloaded, you can only watch utilizing the Apple viewer, not something like VLC?
I don't know about 4k Downloads, but as I understand it, yes, you can only use the Apple viewer to watch the downloaded material. I suspect if 4k Downloads are not possible right now, they might become so in the future.
Although iTunes allow you to save movies to local, it's still restricted by DRM, that's why the movies you purchased are no longer available once you switch your account to another region. The once-and-for-all solution is using a third-party software to output it to an drm-free video file that you can play on any device. You can check: https://www.dumpmedia.com/apple-music-converter/itunes-movie-wont-play.html
Agree wholeheartedly! I was blown away by the visual and audio quality of each show and film on Apple TV+. Not only that, it's one platform that has shows and films that are narratively excellent (coincidentally I wrote on that here: https://whenhopewrites.substack.com/p/best-tv-shows-on-apple-tv-with-immersive). I decided to keep investing in that one streaming platform over other ones for these reasons.
Great read. I tend to only busy physical for my favorite films, and digital (iTunes when possible) for everything else. As you said, I can't tell the difference between HD digital and Blu-ray. I've never thought about backing them up before, and I happen to have a 2 TB HDD just sitting around... :)
Thanks! I love the discs. But at a certain point, keeping them all and the boxes becomes a burden. Backing up the data to an external drive is much easier.
And yeah, the 'quality' can be really negligible. Like, I get the leap from VHS to DVD. But HD Digital and Blu-Ray don't have a significant gap. Neither does HD and 4k, imo. Which is why I'm hoping they're gonna slow down the ad infinitum raising of the quality ceiling with digital remasters.
If you want to play your favorite iTunes movies and shows on other devices such as Android phones, Plex media servers, or smart TVs, the most important thing you need to do is remove DRM from iTunes movies.
I wouldn't know how to do that, sadly!
Maybe you can try TuneSolo Apple Music Converter, which can remove DRM from iTunes movies with one click and help you play movies on any device.
It looks like Apple hasn't enabled the downloading of the ATMOS soundtrack for iTunes movies yet? At each step, the option to get the highest quality ends up being the streaming version. Want HDR? Must be streamed. Want ATMOS? Must be streamed. Want 4K, must be be streamed.
In other words, as the Apple movies store has added features over the past decade, even single one of those new features has not been part of the "download and save offline for unlimited local life" option. (And I agree, this feature is very cool and a differentiator in the marketplace.)
In fact, not only have all the new features not been part of the download option, but as this article notes, previously available features in the download ecosystem like extras are no longer part of it.
In other words, new features are not added to downloads and old features are removed.
And the only competition is in another price category (https://www.kaleidescape.com). Thought as one example of how to do the quality aspect right, and that licensing is not a problem, they are a great example.
I predict the demise of this functionality in the next year or three, which is unfortunate, since at this point you can store hundreds of movies onto a hard drive costing far less than $1 per movie. Heck even if they were the 4k ATMOS enabled downloads, those are still just 10 to 20 gigs each and fully manageable.
I think that's an interesting take. It's certainly possible, but I do think the data size could be a key issue. 10-20 GB is still a lot more data than 5GB and I do believe extras were removed from downloads because the sizes of the files ballooned to 25 GB.
Hypothetically, the lack of ATMOS downloads could also be a means to promote the Apple TV 4K device sales, which as I understand it, have better functionality with ATMOS than Macbooks, but tbh I don't enough about the subject.
I certainly hope they DON'T remove the download option, in any case.
iTunes movies is great but lacking some key stuff.
1. No 4k uhd downloads is appalling at this point.
2. Some studios that release 4k content like Criterion don’t even make it available to stream.
3. No lossless audio downloads is really annoying on a quality surround sound system.
4. Not just the inability to download “extras” like behind the scenes shorts, but the lack of them from some studios even as an option to stream (Janus Films, as an example) is a real bummer.
At the moment, I don't think offering 4k downloads is feasible for them. I'm pretty sure they cancelled Downloadable Extras due to the sheer amount of space they take up. 4k downloads would probably add a few extra GB of memory.
Regarding extras - it's actually been to my experience that in some cases, Itunes has exclusives that you can't get elsewhere but the opposite is true as well. Janus probably wants to save their extras for the Criterion Channel streaming platform.
I loved your essay but correct me if I'm wrong, you can't download higher than 1080p from Apple TV and once downloaded, you can only watch utilizing the Apple viewer, not something like VLC?
I don't know about 4k Downloads, but as I understand it, yes, you can only use the Apple viewer to watch the downloaded material. I suspect if 4k Downloads are not possible right now, they might become so in the future.