Items Being removed from iTunes.

[Fugabutacus]

Considering I've pretty much switched completely to iTunes for home video, it's alarming that I'm not even sure how this works.

If a distributor removes an item from the store, how does the change affect people who have purchased it? Does it disappear from the purchased list and no longer appear for streaming?

I keep a hard copy of everything I buy on a hard drive anyway, but it would suck to lose streaming ability.

Specifically, I'm thinking of Disney movies. They're only available for a few years before going back into the "Disney Vault," and if I started collecting them all, it would really piss me off when they all start to vanish.

I also know people who don't keep hard copies, would they lose them forever?

Even if you have a computer with a large hard drive, with one season of a TV show weighing in at 20GB and one movie weighing in at 5GB, it really isn't long before you're going over 500GB and on your way to 1TB.

 

[boats4chris]

I saw this just last week...

I had my first experience with this last week when I was preparing for a trip. I pulled out my new iPad Air to download a couple of movies overnight from the cloud rather than connect it to my PC to do the transfer. I have ripped some movies as well, so I expected to see a few missing from the cloud, but "Enemy of the State", a movie I purchased on iTunes several years ago was not there. I figured I could just go to the iTunes store and hope that it recognized my previous purchase, but I could not find it on the store at all. I then did a google search for the movie and iTunes and did find links to it on other iTunes stores. I guess you "might" be able to switch stores and download it, but I did not expend the time. Luckily I had it downloaded to my PC already so I ended up just tethering my Air to the PC and transferred it that way.

Frankly, this is a big concern for me. I really don't like the potential to lose something I have already paid for, especially when the whole cloud thing is supposed to be one of the main selling points of purchasing from iTunes.

I guess I will continue to buy the BluRay disk and get the digital copy of most of my movies. That way I still have the ability to RIP it if Apple decides I don't have access to it anymore. (I still buy most of my music on CD for this same reason.)

I hope that Apple can find some way to still grandfather purchases and grant access rather than totally removing a title from a specific iTunes store.

I am not sold on the whole Ultra-Violet mess either...but I blame the movie studios for that one!!!

 

[Fugabutacus]

I had my first experience with this last week when I was preparing for a trip. I pulled out my new iPad Air to download a couple of movies overnight from the cloud rather than connect it to my PC to do the transfer. I have ripped some movies as well, so I expected to see a few missing from the cloud, but "Enemy of the State", a movie I purchased on iTunes several years ago was not there. I figured I could just go to the iTunes store and hope that it recognized my previous purchase, but I could not find it on the store at all. I then did a google search for the movie and iTunes and did find links to it on other iTunes stores. I guess you "might" be able to switch stores and download it, but I did not expend the time. Luckily I had it downloaded to my PC already so I ended up just tethering my Air to the PC and transferred it that way.

Frankly, this is a big concern for me. I really don't like the potential to lose something I have already paid for, especially when the whole cloud thing is supposed to be one of the main selling points of purchasing from iTunes.

I guess I will continue to buy the BluRay disk and get the digital copy of most of my movies. That way I still have the ability to RIP it if Apple decides I don't have access to it anymore. (I still buy most of my music on CD for this same reason.)

I hope that Apple can find some way to still grandfather purchases and grant access rather than totally removing a title from a specific iTunes store.

I am not sold on the whole Ultra-Violet mess either...but I blame the movie studios for that one!!!

I don't see this posing a huge problem for me, as I can just stream from my iMac to my Apple TV, but I'm surely a minority in that I'm a bit of a videophile. I have a 2TB hard drive dedicated to my iTunes library. Most people don't.

The kind of people this long-rumored Apple TV will be aimed at are surely people who aren't really nerdy enough to be backing everything up. They're gonna want iCloud to just work perfectly, and vanishing films is not a great part of that experience!

And surely Apple should have a system in place whereby a distributor has to give 30 days notice. Apple can then email everyone who purchased the film and give them a month to download it before it's gone forever.

 

[tonyr6]

That is why physical optical media will always be better than download cloud based media.

 

[FrancoisC]

They should do like Valve does with Steam. Even if a game is completely removed from the store, it stays on your Steam list and you can always redownload it. Unfortunately the don't 🙁

 

[Rigby]

They should do like Valve does with Steam. Even if a game is completely removed from the store, it stays on your Steam list and you can always redownload it. Unfortunately the don't 🙁

There have been rare cases of movies being removed from buyers' collections, but as a rule, movies *do* stay in your "Purchased" section even if they are no longer offered in the store.

Regarding Disney movies: My only one (The Lion King) is still available for download from the cloud for me, even though it is not for sale in the store anymore.

 

[FrancoisC]

Good to know 🙂

I'm guessing apps that are removed by apple (for violating policies, etc...) are the one we can't re download.

 

[boats4chris]

Not always

There have been rare cases of movies being removed from buyers' collections, but as a rule, movies *do* stay in your "Purchased" section even if they are no longer offered in the store.

Regarding Disney movies: My only one (The Lion King) is still available for download from the cloud for me, even though it is not for sale in the store anymore.

That was not the case for me with the movie "Enemy of the State", at least not on the iPad. It is not listed in the Purchase section of the store any longer on the iPad. I will have to check my PC later to see if it shows up there.

 

[Primejimbo]

That is why physical optical media will always be better than download cloud based media.

And this is why I download it to my hard drive. I do this and Apple can remove it all they want and I still have my copy.

I am buying less and less of physical media and I do not rely on the cloud also.

 

[GhostMac24]

Another reason why I ALWAYS select the "download now" option when purchasing a movie. That way I know I have on my hard drive (and the 4 TB backup drive 🙂

 

[albertfallickwa]

GOtta love my 4 TB hard drive for iTunes backup. 🙂

 

[0098386]

That is why physical optical media will always be better than download cloud based media.

Same here. If it's something important that I want to keep: I'll get the optical. I can then rip from there. If it's something I don't care about I'll just watch it on Netflix if it's available, torrent if it's available nowhere.