Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
How do I stream 4K movies from iTunes on my iMAC 5K?

Even if you could, no streaming box on the market carries a drive big enough to hold more than 1 or 2 movies that are 4K HDR-sized.
[doublepost=1506038021][/doublepost]

The same way you stream any other movie.

I’m curious about this too. On iTunes on my 5K iMac I’m not seeing 4K as an option for movies. When I go to play one it just does so in 1080p.
 
  • Like
Reactions: RickInHouston
Wow, September really has been the Apple & TimMAY's "Bag O' Hurt" Month!
Nothing but things that won't do what you expect them to do or simply fail to work! HAHA!

Apple stock plummets 3%

Torrent sites overloaded.

Boy is Hollywood dumb. They would rather not sell you something than get robbed!

Let’s be honest. People who torrent are going to torrent no matter what. The excuse that it’s because of “Studios’ greed” is BS.
 
How do I stream 4K movies from iTunes on my iMAC 5K?

According to that support article, 5K iMacs cannot stream 4k content. And that REALLY sucks!

Find out what video quality your device can play
HD videos feature a higher-quality picture than SD videos. Some videos also include even higher-quality content, with a 4K option for 4K-compatible devices.

You can see if your device can play 4K, HDR, or Dolby Vision videos by checking the tech specs for your Apple product.

Only the Apple TV 4K, connected to a 4K-compatible television with a compatible ultra-high speed HDMI cable, can play 4K content.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Traverse
The YOUTUBE 4k problem is a big deal for me.
APPLE Will not support 4k in YOUTUBE for a long time...

Well YouTube used to support 4K under Safari, but chose to stop and instead use their own VP9 codec in January 2017. Older 4K content will still play in 4K (I am watching a 2014 YT video right now in 4K under Safari) so there is no technical limitation, just YouTube pushing their own codecs.
 
Last edited:
APPLE Will not support 4k in YOUTUBE for a long time... Read below;
-----

In fact, smart TVs have now generally been format-neutral when it comes to video streaming for years now. So why can’t Apple TV 4K offer the same flexibility?

For starters, Apple has history here. Namely that you can’t play VP9 content on its iOS or macOS Safari browsers either. This is, perhaps, a holdover from when Apple tended to try and steer away from third-party and non-Apple open-source platforms.


Another option is that Apple just didn’t think to build support for the VP9 codec into the latest Apple TV box. It seems inconceivable, though, that Apple could have overlooked a video content source as vast as YouTube when putting its 4K HDR plans together - unless it’s somehow a limitation of the A10X chipset that powers the new ATV box.


As i already mentioned in the previous threads, Google has NEVER updated the YouTube app on the ATV4. Its 2 years old. Stop pointing the blame at Apple and ask Google why they NEVER UPDATED THEIR OWN APP.
 
  • Like
Reactions: nrose101 and max2
Well I can't control that. Comcast a few towns over also has a 1TB limit. For a family to cut the cord with 2 kids who like to watch new movies a 100 times before they get sick of it this won't work. If I buy it and can download it, I download 25GB once not every time the kids or my wife and I want to watch it. The real issue is not my ISP its apple not allowing me to have my content the way I want to have it. I have a NAS just so that I can have my library local. I live far south of Chicago in a town of 1,500 people. Its hard to get the same internet you get in the city.

The residents in your town seem to have the notion that “there is noting I can do”.

Use your voting power to pressure your local pols and have this changed. As long as you all lay down, the ISP will continue to gouge you.
 
I can't believing everything that I'm reading. I'll be sending it right back to the store.. The "most expensive" device apparently can't do anything.

It's a hobby..
 
  • Like
Reactions: nuckinfutz
Why is this a surprise. Netflix, Hulu etc all stream 4K. There is not enough hdd space to hold many 4K movies. This shouldn’t come as a shock
Hint: H.265.

Hint #2: if storage was an issue then you wouldn’t see HD movies available on iTunes for the better part of the last decade.

Hint #3: You’ve seen HD movies on iTunes for the better part of the last decade specifically because Apple’s compression standard took HD movies from 20-30GB+ files down to 3-5GB files on iTunes.

Hint #4: With H.265 compression, the 4K movies would be maybe 10-15GB which is more than acceptable for download purposes, especially with the increased storage of 2017.
 
  • Like
Reactions: nrose101 and max2
Kind of a side discussion:

As far as I know, the Apple TV has never "downloaded" movie content, there's no option, or download management, etc., it only buffers up the stream. I don't even know if we have confirmation how much it buffers up - I've seen some people claim right here on MR "the entire movie", but I've never been able to confirm this, even as a developer with those documentation resources available.

Sure, you can disconnect while a movie or show was playing, and it'll run for a limited about of time, again, that's buffering. If you can't stream 4K, does the ATV5 really send the 4K content, and spin for 15+ minutes before starting the movie, based on the bitrate needed and the projected connection speed?

I really wonder if this is documented anywhere. I've lost connection during streaming, but in my experience, there's just a minute or so before it tanks.

I mean, I've tested it this way: started an HD movie from iTunes, pause it, assuming the logic would be to download at the fastest rate possible (vs. the display bitrate), right? I started an HD movie, paused, left it paused for 6 minutes, at a ~6mbps HD bitrate (could be lower or higher by a couple of mbps, just a midrange speed to make the math simple ...), and a ~60mbps connection (no other traffic on the network), that's about 10:1. At that ratio, 6 minutes, 360 seconds@ 60 mbps would be like an hour of download/preload/buffer. At the very least, if it continued to download at the streaming speed 6mbps, you'd get an equivalent real time of 6 minutes.

However, the 32GB ATV 4, with most of the storage available, I can disconnect the network, and it plays back for about 60 seconds. It does the same with a 30 minute TV show like the Simpsons from FXNow.

Of course, this is totally outside of the discussion about downloading it with a device that does, explicitly support such, like a Mac (so that you could stream from iTunes -> Apple TV), iOS devices, etc.
 
That's a shame; not everyone has a fast enough connection to stream 4K reliably. Being able to download the movie and then watch it later would have been useful.

I'm not sure that's the issue here. The movie is going to be cached on the ATV even as its streamed. So with a slow connection, the movie might very well be cached and available locally when you want to watch it, assuming you don't stream other programming in the interim.

As for downloading a 4K copy for use on any other device, I'm not sure I see the point. Out of all of Apple's devices, the 27" 5k iMac is about the only one that might benefit from a 4K copy, and even then it seems impractical.

Now if there's no local caching such that a movie can be watched any time on the ATV, I'd perceive that's a problem. There's not even enough storage on the largest ATV to hold one 4K movie anyway, so if you lose your internet connection, you're not going to be using the ATV anyway.
 
And people who aren't allowed to buy stuff will ALWAYS find a way to get it. Steve Jobs said it best. People want to own their music. They don't want to keep renting it over and over again.

No spoiled people who think they are entitled to everything will. If it is not available to me, then I spend my money elsewhere.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mmomega
if your internet can't handle it, you're probably not ready for 4k. this is the exact reason why Apple TV 4k took a while to come out. It's not that Apple couldn't figure out how to make a 4k device, but rather they were waiting until the tech was ripe enough to release a 4k streaming device.

What an ignorant comment. I live in a rural area with poor internet and will never be able to stream 4k, but I have a nice new LG Oled 65" 4k that I enjoy every day via uhd blu-rays. I could easily download a 4k movie overnight to enjoy the following evening if they permitted the download, but will never be able to take advantage of a streaming only situation.

Please think before posting ignorant comments.
 
No issue with the streaming as I was kind of expecting it, although I would have liked to download some to my NAS.

Which streaming or content store allows downloading outside of their software/hardware? As far as I know iTunes software can’t be loaded on a NAS.
 
Well duh, how big are the movies, 20GB? It's hardly going to store them on the device is it.
[doublepost=1506040742][/doublepost]
I’m curious about this too. On iTunes on my 5K iMac I’m not seeing 4K as an option for movies. When I go to play one it just does so in 1080p.

Unsurprising. The studios are unlikely to sign off on this. Also, I bet the people involved in the negotiations don't think it's worth it for a 27" screen.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.