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... :)
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.
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.
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... :)
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.
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.
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.