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While I agree with you in spirit... were you expecting that you could... burn the film to a DVD or something?

Of course buying a movie on itunes means you can only watch it on capable devices. You can't play a youtube video on a VHS player either.

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You used to be able to buy songs on iTunes and burn them to CD. Why would the expectation for movies be any different?

While I agree it seems obvious you can’t do that, based on how these platforms have limited things for a long time… but that really should be something you can do.

Why can’t I get the file and put it on another device? Why can’t I burn it to a dvd? It makes sense that Apple aren’t required to make more software for random devices, but why can’t I have the file and do what I want with it?


You’re absolutely right. If it was a song from iTunes you bought you sure as hell could burn it on a dvd or cd or whatever. (Right? It’s been a long time.) So if I buy a movie why can’t I archive it on a DVD?

The upcoming financial quarter is a big issue for whomever licenced that content to Apple and to a lesser extant Apple Inc themselves.

honestly given these types of shenanigans from the big platforms, I think buying physical discs is underrated. At least for the classics that you really want to add to your long-term collection

Not at all (hence saying "obvious in hindsight"). Simply pointing out that, at the time, my purchasing decision wasn't influenced by how many use cases it would restrict.

Also, IIRC, there was a period where you could burn Audio CDs from music that you purchased on iTunes.

edit: turns out music purchased on iTunes is DRM-free!


> there was a period where you could burn Audio CDs from music that you purchased on iTunes.

Music purchased on iTunes is DRM-free, so you can definitely burn CDs with them.


Ah very nice. I suppose it makes sense that music is DRM-free but films aren't

I suppose it makes sense that music is DRM-free but films aren't

Why?


It's orders of magnitude more expensive to make a movie than it is to make a track.

yeah exactly

and?

Haven't used iTunes in more than a decade, but it used to have options for converting files to different formats and burning playlists to disks and ripping CDs.

Actually there were some DVD players back in the day that could play digital files burned to DVD or CD, and it was totally possible to burn DVDs that could play normally on most players from video files.

Ah yes, the divx that wasn’t self-destructing discs.

buying a video game at Walmart means you're only able to play it there, it's so obvious:)

Of course b̵u̵y̵i̵n̵g̵ licensing a movie on itunes...



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