Videos and the iCloud

Your IT tech at work is confused. If you purchase a movie from iTunes and download it, it's getting downloaded to your computer. It doesn't get stored in iCloud. You'll need to have enough space on your iPad itself.

iCloud storage is for backups only. You need more local storage on the iPad itself in order to download the movies to the iPad. iCloud will store the movies for you in the sense that you can download them again if needed, but it really doesn't act like a storage device - a hard drive in the sky - where you can upload content and then download it as needed.

Any purchased content from iTunes does not count against your storage anyway. You really didn't need 40 GB of iCloud storage with a 16GB iPad. You couldn't possible have 40GB of data with a 16 GB device, if you have multiple iDevices, you can use that storage for the other devices as well as the iPad, if you use the same Apple ID and iCloud account for all of them.

You can download the movies directly to the iPad - you don't need to use iTunes necessarily - and then you can delete them when you are done watching them, in order to make room of the device to download another movie or two.

You can download movies again for free in many countries as long as you use the same Apple ID and as long as the movies are still available in iTunes.

Downloading past purchases from the App Store ... - Support - Apple

Copied from the iCloud backup and restore overview kb article.....

You get unlimited free storage for:

• Purchased music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books

• Notes: Backup of purchased music is not available in all countries. Backups of purchased movies and TV shows are U.S. only. Previous purchases may not be restored if they are no longer in the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBookstore.

• Some previously purchased movies may not be available in iTunes in the Cloud. These movies will indicate that they are not available in iTunes in the Cloud on their product details page in the iTunes Store. Previous purchases may be unavailable if they have been refunded or are no longer available in the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBookstore

  .iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match Availability - Support - Apple

I made this a little confusing with my response. What I meant was that you did not need to use iTunes on the computer to download the movies - and of course, I left out the part about "on the computer". You still have to download them using iTunes on the iPad. My apologies.

I have never ripped a DVD to transfer into iTunes and then sync it to the iPad, so I couldn't really help you with that. If you search the forum using the Search Communities in the upper portion of the page, you will find lots of discussions about how to do that. Using a Google search would turn up lots of hits as well.

I think that the 40GB of storage was overkill, but like I said, it depends on how many devices you are backing up to iCloud. If you had 4 or 5 iDevices that are 32GB or more in storage capacity, 40GB might work for you. You can use one iCloud account with multiple devices and if you take lots and lots of photos with all of your devices, you could conceivably need or want that much storage for backups.

Camera roll photos are stored in the backup and photos take up a fair amount of storage space. But if you had tons and tons of photos, I would recommend importing them to your computer and storing them on an external hard drive as well. Even though all of the photos would be in the backup, you cannot retrieve specific items or files from the iCloud backup. If you restore from a backup, you restore everything in that backup to the device. Whereas if you are just trying to locate a handful of photos to restore to the iPad, you could do that by retrieving them from a hard drive and sync them back to the iPad, email them or use a WiFi transfer app for that purpose.

If the only device that you are using for backups has a 16GB storage capacity, it is impossible for you to need more than 16GB of storage in iCloud. You can't possibly exceed 16GB of storage on the iPad so you couldn't possible have 16 GB of data or photos to backup.

I hope that answered your question.....And I hope the Steelers have a better year than last year. So many question marks this year...but I never give up on the Black and Gold! Go Steelers!