Newbie Question regarding downloading movies from iTunes

Hi, welcome to the AppleTV forum.

snerkler1 wrote:

Hi,

If I buy a movie or TV show from iTunes on my Apple TV is it stored on my Apple TV or is it stored on the iTunes server and then streamed to my Apple TV every time I want to watch it?

AppleTV has no permanent storage only some solid state memory that it will enable it to buffer a movie for playback. When you do something else with the unit that buffer will clear.

Provided iTunes in the cloud is available in your country, as you suggest, the movie is made available for AppleTV to play agin by redownloading from the server on demand.

Also, If I buy it in iTunes is it accessible on all my devices, eg can I download it and save it on my mac?

It does not matter where you buy (rentals are different) the movie/TV Show - if you buy on AppleTV it will be available to download to iTunes on a PC/Mac via the Purchased link on the right in Movies/Films or on another AppleTV you own, iPhone, iPad etc. If you buy SD you will clearly only be able to redownload SD. If you buy HD you will be able to download 720p, 1080p or SD versions.

Worth pointing out that a movie/show is not guaranteed to remain in the cloud indefinitely - if the studio/rights holder changes licensing terms or the version sold (eg standard to director's cut), then the movie may disappear from the cloud so I strongly recommend you download purchases in all required formats to iTunes on a PC/Mac and keep a backup in case the thing disappears from the cloud - part of me is starting to argue that if only a small % age of things get removed from the cloud then for the time/hassle involved in keeping backups the potential loss may be small even if you did have to repurchase, compared to time/effort/storage of keeping copies locally on computer or external drives. In practice your brodaband speed and any caps are probaby more relevant, so keeping local copies is more sensible if you have multiple devices and only wish to download once. A movie/TV Show in iTunes on a PC/Mac can be played across the LAN using the Conputers icon on AppleTV to access the iTunes library on the LAN rather than redownloading from the internet server but computer must be on with itunes running.

snerkler1 wrote:

If you rent a movie do you just get to watch it once, or do you have it for a period of time and can watch it as many times as you like, if so how long do you get it for?

Rentals are available to START watching anytime from renting for 30 days.

Once you START watching however you only have 24-48 hours to watch the movie (24 hours US, 48 hours UK for example), but can watch as many times as you like within that time frame - be aware that this can mean redownloading if you watch and AppleTV buffer clears, or you rent and don't watch for some days. Best not to rent more than 1 movie at a time on the unit as they may compete for space. You can also rent in iTunes and stream the movie locally to AppleTV, or in some cases transfer from itunes to an iOS device to finish watching.

Rentals made on an AppleTV/iOS device can only be viewed there. Rentals in iTunes allow local streaming or transfer in some cases.

AC

Rentals FAQ:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1657

Glad to help. AppleTV has many ways of accomplishing the same thing depedning on whether you are streaming locally or from the cloud and it can all get a bit confusing until you are used to it. There is also Airplay of video from iPads/iPhones etc which pushes purchased video or a live video mirror of the device screen (newer devices only) - I'm not so keen on Airplay as it is very network dependent but can work very well.

AC

snerkler1 wrote:

Yeah I had trouble streaming over AirPlay with FullHD movies and figured out I need to have a bit rate of no higher than 15 to get uninterrupted playback :-/

iTunes Store maxes out at 8 Mbps or so for for HD video so Apple probably don't expect users to use higher rates for any other video but if it works great. It will ultimately be LAN dependent however.

Where possible connect as many things by ethernet in the system as possible when using LAN based streaming and remember if any media is stored on the LAN, accessed on an iOS device then Airplayed to AppleTV there may be several network connections involved each using their own slice of the bandwidth.

snerkler1 wrote:

Thanks for the advice re backing up purchases too, I'd have never given any thought to licences being revoked. It surprises me that companies could do this if customers have already paid for a product :(

I agree that it seems underhand, though pretty sure it's in the small print somewhere for iTunes T&Cs.

Some studios wouldn't play ball with cloud redownload of purchases initially though most do now - that may change. I think I have one redeemed digital copy that does not appear in the cloud and never has.

When iTunes music purchasing was changed from copy protected to DRM free there was the opportunity to upgrade to iTunes Plus format which is DRM free - I still have several albums/music videos that are not upgradable despite seemingly identical items being available in the store - when I've queried with iTunes store they've said that the items are no longer the same - maybe it's as subtle as a catalogue/SKU code being different. It's a shame but is only a small number of what I purchased.

AC

Just so I understand...

It seems unlikely that most of purchases in iTunes may not be redownloadable... In theory, most of my purchases can be redownloadable anywhere, anytime on Apple OS and devices using that same Apple ID, correct?

So if I wanted to make space on my computer, I could delete most of my iTunes content and still download anytime I wanted to view anything, correct?

If I wanted to be safe, could I move the iTunes library onto an external HD? Do I just drag and drop the iTunes library onto it or is it more complicated?

Thank you

i've had this happen to me on numerous occasions where I bought a movie, or rented a TV series, and I go back a year later, and it is gone. It shouldn't matter if the digital rights revoked. If a customer pays for a movie, then it should be Apple's job to always keep that movie available for people who purchased it – they just shouldn't able to continue to sell it because the rights of been revoked. Apple has been pushing for people to use portable devices more and more like iPhones, iPads, and AppleTV and move away from iTunes being the media server, and they push their cloud big time. It is irresponsible to push this cloud if movies and TV shows and music can disappear from them.The only thing that sGould ever disappear is the sales of the item if the digital rights of been revoked. Otherwise I would say this is a kin to stealing your money because if you buy a movie, you own that rides to watch that movie as many times as you want, Apple suddenly makes that movie or TV show unavailable, you're right to watch that movie has been stripped – and I know this has to do with a lot of Hollywood in studio digital rights and things like that

people are correct that you should save as many of your media in iTunes as possible just in case Apple pull something from the cloud, but the problem is iTunes is only designed to handle so many movies and TV shows… I currently have 20 TB in movies, music and TV shows in my iTunes library. I have one of the fastest machines on the planet...yet it takes 10 minutes for iTunes to start up and finish doing all the things that needs to do because it has to cash the artwork and thumbnail out of all of these thousands of movies TV shows and music… Not to mention I have to build massive raid arrays in side of my computer just to hold iTunes data… Currently I have five, 4 TB drives running in a raid zero configuration so it shows up as a 20 TB drive, and then I had to pay $3000 for a 40 TB USB 3.0 grade back up box filled with a ton of 4 TB drives – all lumped together to show as one drive. Granted my backup box I run in a raid five configuration… That way if one drive fails, I do not lose any data, and I can replace the drive while the array rebuilds itself. I probably should do that with the array inside my computer but I have to waste one hard drive in order to do it, and I don't have to drive a space to do that

that's why I find this model of having to save all of your media absurd… I shouldn't have to have 20 TB of space on my computer and 40 TB worth of space in order to back it up… Not to mention every few months the back of module fills up and I have to erase it and do a full backup from scratch and then do incremental's for several months… And with that much data of full system backup of over 20 TB takes 48 hours in which time I cannot use my computer

I currently use Windows 10 64-bit and 64 bit of the newest version of iTunes… Oh and one other problem with having a library that big is if I connect my iPad to try to stream movies from it… Because I have so many it takes 20 to 30 minutes from my iPad. Jto talk to iTunes and caChe all my data before I can start streaming anything....and this is going over a 2.1 Gbps wifi 802.11 AC. However, the iPad air two is only capable of 833 Mb per second… However even at that speed is ridiculous that it takes that long to talk to my iTunes library.