Many Purchased Movies Missing from Library

Mmm no. That's not how I read it.

First of all, they ARE responsible for delivering the content to me one time. There is no "expiration period" specified in the iTunes or AppleTV TOS for an initial download.:

https://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/appletv.pdf

I do not have to watch a movie immediately upon purchasing it (per their terms) and in most cases don't or can't due to iTunes simply failing (which happens frequently with older titles). Anything lost under those conditions isn't covered by their "redownload" clause although I assume it's trivially covered by their "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" clauses anyway.

Second, Apple "removing" items from your Library list is deceptive. It may not be available any longer, but the item has been purchased. They could just as easily give a message saying "This item is no longer available for download". They instead surreptitiously remove the entry from your Library as if you never purchased it. Why? So you think you never did.

Third, as far as Apple "not having anything to do with it" that's a red herring. Apple controls the operational terms of iTunes, the method of operation and defines and negotiates the content distribution terms with content providers. They are directly involved and profit from these practices.

As I provided in my post from August:

In Apple's Legal Media Services Terms and Conditions, there are two bullets that clearly state your level of responsibility regarding your purchased media:

It is your responsibility not to lose, destroy, or damage Content once downloaded. We encourage you to back up your Content regularly.

REDOWNLOADS

You may be able to redownload previously acquired Content (“Redownload”) to your devices that are signed in with the same Apple ID (“Associated Devices”). You can see Content types available for Redownload in your Home Country at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204632. Content may not be available for Redownload if that Content is no longer offered on our Services.

Cheers,

GB

You cannot download 4K movies that you have purchased. You can only download a 1080p copy. How do we backup the 4K resolution version?

Except that doesn’t work for 4K movie purchases. How do you back those up?

While I find movies, I didn't hide myself, hidden. My missing movies are just gone. They are not in my library anywhere. When I look for them they are all still available for purchase in the store. They want me to buy them all over again.

Ive had backed up items disappear from my hard drive. I have had movies bought in years past show up as being new in the library. I have also had plenty of movies previously downloaded show up in the que for things presently being downloaded. The computer program has always been fairly buggy & messed things up. End up with duplicates of some items & none of another.

Using itunes TV to play from the cloud has rarely been buggy. Except for when my favorite movies poof from the cloud & the only way to watch them is to pay full price all over again. Movies you watch & loose rights to are called rentals. Paying full price doesn't make any sense if they can at anytime be taken away.

To add to my previous comments. Every company involved in selling digital content should be catering to the people that buy digital content, instead of hard copies on dvd, instead of messing around with their purchases. The cloud is out there until the world goes back to the dark ages. So its up & running everyday anyway.

They sell content mostly at full price & they have to make more on the digital.

No packaging, assembly lines, employees by the hour, shipping, lost, stolen, defective batches of product, etc etc. Seems like a win win for them.

I found my movies but there is no option to unhide them. Also it seems that I have to be connected to Wifi to watch them but originally they were dowloaded locally to iPad (local icons) and I could watch without Wifi. I need to be able to watch them WITHOUT Wifi -- the original reason that I purchased them.

Hints? Whom shall I contact?

This just happened to me. I lost the entire original and new Batman series when the new "combo" packs were released. This is absolutely absurd. There should be a class action lawsuit about this, frankly.

I think it's likely that you've just suffered the "relist" problem (you hear about this a lot more with audio than movies). What happens is the studio pulls the title and relists it under a new product code. Bam, you just lost the movie. We just lost the entire Batman series (old and new!) when they decided to create "combo deals" with the movies. That's $70 (at least) lost + $70 to buy the two combos again. Our collection is pretty large, about 600 movies, and about 30 of them have been lost now. It's enough to warrant buying an external hard drive and home theater PC due to the value of the collection.

We'll have to rebuy them all anyway when 4K HDR fill in the blank comes out (lol, sigh).

I found my movies in my Apple iTunes receipts. There are many movies I purchased which have been removed and then refreshed under new product numbers. The Batman series is the most egregious, since I owned all of them, and just recently purchased 3 of the movies. Glad I wasted that $50 when I was misled into believing I was "Purchasing" them.

I really hope Apple support is not trying to gloss over this issue. The iTunes interface gives no indication that you are either about to, or have, "lost" purchases due to catalog changes. As a major movie collector, I find this offensive, and have already ordered backup hardware to compensate for Apple's dishonesty.

That's great, unless you are an Apple TV user, in which case that notification is not provided. In fact, the purchases you've made are simply removed from your lists. So far, we've cataloged 41 titles lost this way and that's just getting started. What's infuriating are the number of titles that are precise duplicates. Here are some samples:

- The entire LOTR saga

- The entire Batman saga (old, mid, and new)

- Numerous James Bond films

- etc.

Frankly, "removing a title and replacing it with an identical copy that you no longer have access to" is fraud. You can attempt to explain it away with the TOS but those are obviously up for interpretation. The identical content IS available, they've simply changed the product number. This practice is deceptive. Period.

I just found the same thing this morning. Seven titles I previously had have disappeared from my list and five of them are still available for purchase from the Apple store.

I checked my account to see if they are hidden, but they aren’t.

I’ve close on to 500 movies in my library so it is hard to keep a tab on all the titles. To be honest this really isn’t good enough when you are paying premium prices for titles.

So Gail, how do we backup our 4K movie purchases? You know, because the EULA states that we responsible for backing up our purchases because the content may be removed at any time (hint: you can't!)? *****

<Edited by Host>

Like yourself I have been finding this issue a bit of a frustration. My guess is that the argument may be that you are actually purchasing a HD copy but Apple lets you watch 4K version of the movie through ATV4K.

That being said, I’ve noticed that there are now HD and 4K versions of some movies for sale in iTunes Store through ATV4K. I was under the impression that once iTunes obtained 4K version of a movie you ’owned’ that you would be upgraded but I noticed that two of my movies (‘Captain Phillips’ and ‘Lone Survivor’) still only give me access to HD version despite a 4K version being available. I can get 4K version if I purchase the movie again.

System still finding its feet it would seem. 🏻♂