Help burning a DVD on iMac from iTunes

[Kenzembo1]

Hey, I apologize in advance (this is my first post)--I'm a total newb when it comes to macs...I just recently purchased an iMac and bought a movie from iTunes to watch on my iPhone when on vacation. There may already be a similar thread, but I simply would like to know how to burn the movie that I purchased (on iTunes) onto a disc so that I could put it into a standard DVD player. I was reading through the threads and I gather that you have to use iDVD in correlation with a program called "Handbrake" (never heard of this before)...is this true or do I need to purchase or download some kind of software in order to burn DVD's?
I would greatly appreciate any help/advice you can provide.

*Note- Please dumb it down as I never used the iDVD software before and I'm not the most computer-friendly person (ie. computer illiterate lol)...listing steps would be a great help!

 

[smurfjammer]

Sorry you can't
Movies purchased from iTunes have DRM and you can't burn it to DVD and play it in a standard DVD player.

 

[EricNau]

Unfortunately, this is not possible, due to the Digital Rights Management (DRM) encoded into videos purchased through iTunes.

The process you refer to (involving Handbrake) would apply to the opposite process: copying a DVD movie into iTunes.

 

[Kenzembo1]

Thanks for the heads up guys...I had a feeling Apple had some kind of protection rights that wouldn't allow you to burn DVD's this way (figures)..
I just thought it would be more convenient to purchase movies digitally so that I can organize & access them on my iMac whenever and not have to worry about loosing the physical copy of the movie-- then I could back them up and burn them if I wanted the physical copy to take over to a friends & watch..bummer

 

[EricNau]

Thanks for the heads up guys...I had a feeling Apple had some kind of protection rights that wouldn't allow you to burn DVD's this way (figures)..
I just thought it would be more convenient to purchase movies digitally so that I can organize & access them on my iMac whenever and not have to worry about loosing the physical copy of the movie-- then I could back them up and burn them if I wanted the physical copy to take over to a friends & watch..bummer

It's worth noting that you can backup the movie file, just like you would any other file, but you cannot watch it on a DVD player, and will only be able to watch it on computers authorized with your iTunes account.

It's always a good idea to have a backup.