Does iOS 7 let you stream purchased movies/tv shows from the cloud without downloading them to your device in the Video app?

Question

Level 1

0 points

Does iOS 7 let you stream purchased movies/tv shows from the cloud without downloading them to your device in the Video app?

I can't find any information about this, and I'm currently unsure what happens so I was hoping someone can answer this for me. I've updated my iPhone 4 to iOS7 - it looks like, by default the option to show my undownloaded purshased on my iPhone was activated as part of the update - so all my purchased music, movies, tv shows show in my lists in the Music, and Video apps respectively even if they haven't been downloaded onto my device.

In the music app, I tried playing a track I didn't have downloaded on my phone - it started playing almost instantly (as I was hooked up to the wifi) but after the track had finished it looks like it downloaded onto my device at the same time it was playing (because the download from cloud button had been removed from it)

My question is, in the Video app can you stream movies/tv shows direct from the cloud without them being permenantly downloaded onto your device? Or, if I did the carried out the same action in the Video app as in the Music app do they download at the same time as playing?

I haven't been able to find a clear answer anywhere on the internet yet and haven't had a chance to perform a proper test yet...

Thanks for your comments/help in advance!

iPhone 4, iOS 7, 32GB

Posted on Sep 20, 2013 2:39 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

anilsudhakaran

Level 4

1,637 points

Sep 20, 2013 2:46 AM in response to Codename21

Yes it streams without downloading. Don't tap on the cloud icon or it will download.

Reply

Answer 2

Codename21 Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 20, 2013 2:55 AM in response to anilsudhakaran

Thanks for the help!

Strange that the Music app performs differently to the Video app, but thats good news!

Reply

Answer 3

Sep 20, 2013 10:53 AM in response to anilsudhakaran

I agree this feature is available. However, I upgraded my iPhone 4S and my iPad2 to iOS 7, and I noticed this feature is only available on my iPad 2.

I hope Apple will eventually add support for streaming via the iPhone 4S as well.

Reply

Answer 4

Mar 13, 2014 4:37 PM in response to Codename21

This seems to have changed lately. I just had 2.4GB free on my phone and noticed something strange. When I turned on "show all videos" and then "streamed" one of my films, I got a notice pop up telling me I was out of storage! I went into settings and looked in general > about and low and behold my 2.4 had gone down to 0. I then unchecked "show all videos" in video settings and bingo my storage popped back up to 2.4GB. I tried this on my iPad too with exactly the same results. It seems it doesn't truly stream the content, it background downloads a file that is hidden behind the GUI and plays from this file. We're tricked into thinking it's streaming because it starts playing right away but this is just because it's a file type that supports QuickStart, so the device doesn't have to wait for the file to complete before it can play.

This to me is a real shame as the big benefit for many would have been to play content over wifi that they have purchased but don't have on the device at the time due to space issues. Whether it's always been like this and nobody else has noticed, or if it's changed in the way it works lately I don't know.

True streaming from iTunes to iOS would be an awesome feature. Maybe apple don't want to give up the bandwidth on it's servers with a world of people streaming.

Discuss!

J

Reply