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kobiepstoday at 4:10 PM4 repliesview on HN

A recent experience I had was :

1. buy movie on iTunes 2. have kids that can't do long distance drives 3. obtain dvd players for car 4. realized I can't play films that I "bought" on DVD players

It feels like the "Buy" button on iTunes/Apple TV is misleading, and should be renamed to "License to watch on Apple devices". Obvious in hindsight, but this type of DRM severely restricts use cases.


Replies

uxjwtoday at 7:03 PM

I've had movies I've "bought" disappear from the Apple account. I guess they lost the license and I'm supposed to download all purchases and manually copy between devices. I contacted Apple and they offered a free rental as compensation. "Buy" doesn't mean the same on these streaming platforms, its just a longer-term rental.

lucaspillertoday at 4:39 PM

Netflix has the same problem. Downloaded some TV shows for my daughter to watch while we were travelling. Worked fine on the plane, arrived to the hotel, connected to WiFi "This content is not available in your location". Ok, disconnect, don't need wifi. Same message, "This content is not available in your location".

sneaktoday at 6:33 PM

It says right in the TOS that it's licensed, not sold. Then the button says "Buy". It's intentionally misleading and contradictory.

cheezetoday at 4:19 PM

While I agree with you in spirit... were you expecting that you could... burn the film to a DVD or something?

Of course buying a movie on itunes means you can only watch it on capable devices. You can't play a youtube video on a VHS player either.

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