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iTunes does it. Purchase the movie, download it, then the file is yours. It has a signature in it that makes it only usable by you. Before my external HD blew up that’s what I do with my movies. That way I could just travel with that and not have to bog down my laptop with a fuck ton of files.

Because everything is now wrapped up in all sorts of legalese which means it's not legal to download and keep them.

Digital copies are essentially long term rentals.

There are exceptions but I think that's generally the case.

It is a piracy measure. Make it harder for you to share the movie

I refuse to buy digital copies of movies from Amazon after hearing about people losing access to them, I still buy a Blu-ray copy whenever I want to keep a movie.

That's what I did. I don't buy any movies from Amazon anymore. Learned the hard way.

Physical media for the win!

It may be more expensive in the long run, but at least I own them. Plus I love having something in a physical media anyway, much more tactile than only having an icon on a screen.

Do you actually own a universal file though? Can you play it through windows media player or is it only playable through itunes approved player? I've never used iTunes so I'm unfamiliar. Amazon allows for downloads but it's downloaded to their app that you install on your device so it's still tied to Amazon. You can't play the downloaded movie through any other media player.

Put simply, because when you buy a copy of a movie, you're not actually legally buying the copy but a license to view it. That's pretty much moot when it comes to a physical copy, but in the digital era, the rubber is meeting the road in that respect.

That's why I was asking about downloading movies vs downloading music. Downloading music is allowed but movies are not. Are they going to eventually make music the same way where music is basically just rented and listened to thru the media player of whatever platform you purchased it from and we will no longer be allowed to own any music files, movie files, video games, etc. Is this to be the future where you own nothing and only rent it until the platform you rented from or the creator decides they no longer want to rent it to you? Then you're SOL

FWIW a lot of digital music can remove things that are no longer licensed when you synch your device.

Didn’t try using anything beyond QuickTime. But it is downloaded in a folder on the computer as an MP4. So theoretically it should work. On that computer. Or any other computer that has authorizations through your iTunes. Theoretically.

It’s been some time since my external blew up. So I haven’t been able to use this option since.

It only works in iTunes or QuickTime player. This is to protect it against you copying or altering it etc.

It doesn’t work outside QuickTime or iTunes. They are m4v “protected” files, not just mp4.

It very much varies by jurisdiction as well.

In the UK it is technically illegal to transfer media between formats, so you technically can't to CDs, DVDs, or Blu Rays.

That's exactly what I do however. I buy my movies as physical media, and rip them to my NAS. That way I've always got a physical copy, but the convenience of a digital one as well. And I've paid for it.

Don’t all Blu-Rays still come with a digital code to download the film?

I’ve never used that as I have used iTunes for years. Very conveniently get all my movies automatically downloaded onto my hard drive.

Ahhh. Well. That answers that. Sorry OP.

Call your local representative, tell them that should be illegal. Don’t just accept corporations stealing from you as “oops, shoulda known better, corporations ARE evil after all.”

They did at one point in time in the early days, but now it's just for whatever the current movie streaming thing is. Ultraviolet or whatever. You can easily rip a Blu-ray though. Takes 20 min

Is Ultraviolet not a digital download?

I believe they had a download option, but they called it offline mode where you would download a file but it's an encrypted file not like an mp4 video file. I could be hazy on my memory though

Digital codes kind of tried to adress it, but it was too fractured between services to really catch on for the average person. I've given away countless digital codes for that reason. They also expire which is a problem for older releases. In addition, they're not immune to licences being pulled or services being merged/shutdown.

Aside from being an anti piracy measure I think it's also to keep the customers in their ecosystem. Once the customer loads up the app/software to view digital purchases they'll likely be presented with other content to rent/purchase at some point during navigation.

As to why music DRM is less intense, anyone's guess is as good as mine. I suspect it might be that audio files are accessed and moved more often between devices. If the DRM was too hardcore it could become a hindrance and possibly impact sales.

There's a rough road ahead for this kind of stuff I think. Acquisitions and rights being transferred around will result in content being pulled from services, or outright removed from personal digital collections as we've seen a few times already.

You never own software. Even if you download a file, you’re purchasing a licence to use the data, you don’t ‘own’ it. And it is in the publishers legal right to disable the file you downloaded remotely.

So the ‘difference’ to streaming you’re talking about, apart from possibly convenience, is an illusion.

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I think it will be the best use for NFTs. I only buy digital content. I own none of them

The studios don't want you to be able to copy your downloaded movie to a USB stick/plex server/etc and share it with your friends and family. They want everyone to buy their own copies.

Music companies were forced to allow DRM free music downloads because there was a big consumer demand to be able to e.g buy a song from iTunes and play it on a Nokia phone, but now the market has moved to mostly streaming and you can easily stream on any device that demand has gone. People who are concerned about actually owning their movies are a declining niche that the studios can ignore.

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But if I'm gonna share the movie no matter what, then I'm better off just pirating it and not spending a dime...

The free version becomes a superior product.

You can download the movies you purchase on Apple's iTunes Store. The content is tied to your AppleID, though, so you can't simply move the file around and duplicating it doesn't work.

There's probably a way to remove the protections, but I never checked.

But, on that note, you might want to check Jeff Geerling's channel on YouTube. He posted a video last week about owning your media and he explains how he started ripping discs to have his movies in the computer - and even stream it, though only inside his own network.

There are multiple programs out there that will convert the files. Do a little searching and you'll find them.

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I fully agree with what you say. And regarding this part:

> I read online that Warner Bros planned to start phasing out DVDs and blurays this year in the process of going completely digital.

One thing worth noting is that when you stream a movie (or TV show) it's very heavily compressed.

With Blu-rays (for example) there is still some compression but the video and audio quality is still a lot higher and because of this the data takes up a lot more space - the average movie is usually somewhere between 30 to 40GBytes on a standard Blu-ray, while 4K will of course be even larger.

If studios start going down the 'streaming only' route (so no physical media at all) you can bet they'll still use very heavy compression; this wouldn't be so bad if they let people legally download purchased content using the same kind of compression that your average movie on Blu-ray is subjected to, but you can bet your bottom dollar that this likely won't happen, or if it does it will be on a very limited scale.

Using the above example digital only is bad if you want the best audio and visual quality, even more so if you have a large 4K TV.

And then of course you have movies that are stuck in 'streaming only jail' - two examples of this are the war movie 'Greyhound' starring Tom Hanks and the excellent Christmas animated movie 'Klaus'. The former is stuck with Apple TV+ and the latter with Netflix. I'd love to buy these on Blu-ray but I can't. There's piracy of course (which I don't indulge in) but even then the pirated versions will only be rips from the lower quality streams.

The customer is losing out, as so often happens.

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You need to removed the DRM first. You can get software that does that but it costs.

They will defeat DRM too. Trust me; I have done it, as have many others. Cost: sure, a little.

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Downloading a pirated movie. I'm too paranoid to download movies from somebody. Big brother might be watching.

The problem with ripping discs is once they stop making movies on disc and go completely digital you no longer have access to new movies unless you go the rental route which is what it seems these studios are wanting.

Capitalism strikes fear.

But look, if you already bought the film, why would downloading a copy for personal use be illegal? My understanding is that copying itself isn’t illegal; breaking DRM is.

I don’t believe any prosecutor would even try to go to court if it’s a download of something you already bought.

From my understanding the digital code was to access a file that lived on the cloud and was owned by the production company. You never actually got the file to download. I could be wrong though.

It's actually cheaper. I'm currently buying up copies of animated movies because I have newborn nieces and nephews that will start watching them in the next couple of years. I pick up the discs on ebay used for $2-$5 on average. I checked Amazon and the same movies on Amazon are $3.99 to rent and $15-$20 to purchase. Physical media is cheaper and then you can just make digital copies for the kids to watch and keep the discs in a binder as backups.