Nope. When you redeem those codes, you have to access them from where you redeemed them (i.e. iTunes, Vudu, Amazon, Movies Anywhere, etc.).
“A bit of googling turned up this suggesting that “If you purchased a Blu-ray disc or DVD that did not offer a digital code, you can still get a digital copy of your movie with “Disc to Digital” from Vudu” (for a price).[quote=“Thudlow_Boink, post:13, topic:964812, full:true”]”
The disc-to-digital program is really nice, but the library of available titles is limited (it’s still several thousand titles long, though). It’s just going to make the movie available on Vudu (and if it’s a Movies Anywhere title, on iTunes/Amazon/Fandango/etc.), not available as a digital file on your computer/server.
The comic did show a current problem, though - type a search term in Amazon and you are shown 10,000 results, in which is buried a tiny few of what you are looking for (usually).
The short answer for the OP is - NO! The whole entertainment industry is built on making it difficult to get files that can be freely moved from A to B, since then it can carry on to a few million of B’s closest friends. The files will move only if the studio owning the rights (or the streamer) can ensure that you are still the one and only customer who paid for it; usually by logins and through provider-specific apps.
And then end up chasing them around from platform to platform when one and then another goes under.
I was able to transfer some digital copies from one old platform to Google Play, but I’ve had to move books bought with (IIRC) my old Nook in the UK to at least two different platforms.
There are some books, and lots of music, that can be purchased without copy protection. I mostly use my Kindle for library books because i, too, don’t want to buy something that’s going to arbitrarily stop working because the company that sold out to me goes out of business, or loses interest in that market segment. But i have purchased several books that were available DSM-free.
I think movies are less likely to be available in an acceptable format. I only “buy” a movie if i am willing to view it as a short-term rental.
I don’t have too much concern about Apple going under, or the studio-conglomerate that put Movies Anywhere together. I have to admit I was surprised when Walmart sold Vudu to Fandango, but things seem pretty stable. In fact, the very nature of Movies Anywhere is a pretty good indicator that the industry of streaming rights isn’t going anywhere - they all serve to prop each other up, since the titles are propagated across the platforms.
I have a lot of friends who were messed up when Apple changed something with iTunes. I was glad i had only purchased 2 or 3 sings from them (i lost those) and mostly had ripped my own copies from CDs. My DRM-free copies have been stable over many computers, through lost and changed email addresses, with no hassles.
I am totally sympathetic to the desire to buy a copy of a movie that’s actually something your hardware can read and play, without piping it through some external rights-manager.
Still following the discussion on here, although my original question has pretty much been resolved - what I want is not something that any studio or content provider is willing to provide. It’s the answer I expected.
I have the same fears that others have posted, namely “chasing” my content around or having it be tied to some company that goes under. Ultimately, when my viewing is connected to some other company, I view that as a very real downside and don’t ever really view it as “owning” anything.
For some reason that I don’t understand, the DRM on music is different than that on movies. Plus, most people’s screwed-up iTunes music libraries is screwed up because of CD-ripping (perfectly legal), something that never happened with movies.
But yes - I absolutely get the desire to actually own your copy. Which is why I only buy those digital codes for drastically reduced prices (like $2-3), essentially the price of a rental, but gets upgraded to the highest streaming resolution available.
There have been occasional issues where users will ‘lose’ access to purchased movies and music, sometimes due to Apple errors, sometimes due to licensing disputes (reportedly), and sometimes due to user error. Apple’s customer service in the first two has been . . . . very shrugworthy.
The somewhat more common issue, especially when everyone started going iPhone happy, is account issues. With two factor authentication as a default, if you lose/drop your phone and don’t know the email you set your phone up with, you can be in a situation where you cannot recover your AppleID without an act of God.
And with that AppleID goes all your digital purchases.
Microsoft isn’t going under anytime soon, but you can’t buy a Zune from them.
There were stories about Apple users finding that some of their music stopped working when their iPhone reported they were no longer in the USA (vacation) because Apple did not have rights to the music in every country at one time.
My wife and I have 2 Kindles, 4 iPads, 3 active PC’s and 3 Apple MAC’s, an Apple TV and 3 cable boxes. Oh, and 2 main iPhones and 4 older ones, and an iPod from 2004. A Firestick and another media player. A smart TV which can also do Netflix and Prime. A system that limits the number of registered connections is basically not a worthwhile thing for us, but fortunately we tend to use only 2 or 3 of those for real media applications. All our music is DRM free (I have over 800 CD’s and have ripped what I need). I avoid DRM when I can.
Well, I was looking for specific examples of what happened to Puzzelgal’s friends, not the nebulous “occasional” “sometimes” “reportedly” stuff.
Puzzlegal seems to be saying she wouldn’t purchase iTunes music because “a lot” of her friends somehow got screwed by changes made to iTunes DRM, so I was just interested in knowing what those changes were and what exactly happened because I don’t think I’ve ever really heard about an issue so widespread that an average person would have multiple friends it happened to.
I mean, you put “lose” in quotes because practically speaking, that doesn’t really happen outside of user error. Yes, there are stories of people losing access to their purchases, but apparently it’s vanishingly rare for it to happen and when it does it’s usually for some arcane reason, not because Apple changed the rules and now everyone gets fucked.
No, i wouldn’t purchase iTunes music because i am leery of drm. And i did lose access to the three or four songs i bought, probably because i don’t recall what my apple id was. I consider that form of user error inevitable given enough time. I’ve been online for a long time, now.
But the problem friends had was when Apple did some kind of amnesty, iirc. And Apple was confused as to the status of some of their music, and everything got muddled and they lost a lot of content. It didn’t directly involve me, so i don’t recall the details. I just remember friends complaining about it, I’m afraid. There may well have been some user error involved. As i said above, some level of user error seems inevitable, and any scheme that assumes i will be perfect is a bad one for me to buy into.
I don’t know what kind of amnesty you’re talking about but I’ve never heard of Apple or anyone else doing it anyway, so without more details I’ll chalk you and your friends problems up to user error, no offense.
OK, but assuming you’re an average internet person, you’re probably already doing that with several other online services, whether it’s Netflix, your bank, or even this site. You signed up with a login and pass which is how you get access. They don’t expect you to be perfect because they all have “Forgot your login or password?” links.
iTunes music hasn’t had DRM since 2009. I think there was a period where if you had the older DRM/FairPlay encumbered tunes you could upgrade them to the open ones for the difference in price ($0.30) but don’t quote me on that. I never bought any of the DRM’d songs but I have bought some after that point, and have no issues with them. They’re still AAC instead of MP3 but that’s not a proprietary format. I also bought some MP3s from Amazon and direct from creators too and it all plays fine in iTunes (Music.app ugh).
There have been some hiccups with things like iTunes Match (introduced in 2011) and the move to Apple Music streaming where old libraries get scanned and merged with the cloud-based iTunes store to provide better cross-device synchronization, on-the-go access, and to prevent duplication of purchases. Sometimes the “matched” songs were different versions/covers/recordings than what was expected, or different albums, and the metadata got all mixed up, especially if older DRM songs were involved.
Oh, yeah, I have purchased some iTunes stuff since 2009. I did mention that I’ve been on-line for a long time. There were a few years there were iTunes still had DRM and Amazon didn’t, and I bought from Amazon then, except that I usually just bought the CD and ripped it myself.
What you describe about Match sounds like what friends complained about. Especially “the metadata got all messed up”.
Yup, that’s exactly why I did. I would say the user issues have been somewhat worse for Apple Music / iTunes than other services because of Apple’s insistence on security and the nature of people setting up smartphones in a hurry (and occasionally with throw-away accounts).
I was an early iTunes adopter, with the second generation white iPod (10 whole gig!), and I have maintained the same account the whole time and lost none of my 300ish tracks. If you dredge through various reports about lost materials, it’s much more frequently user uploaded/ripped material, material from competing services (Amazon, etc) that may not cross-load, subscription/Match music, and the like.
So yeah, especially since I used to do tech support for T-Mobile and at least once a DAY someone locked themselves out of their iPhone (possibly forever) due to not knowing their own email account, I ascribe the majority of the issues to various flavors of user error. BUT, since I used iTunes for years, I know (especially the windows version) was an increasingly janky kludge of ‘improvements’ and cross platform hacks, so I wouldn’t be surprised that some stuff was legit Apple issues.
Back to the OP - I only have one movie I purchased digitally through iTunes, which I got on a steep sale, and it was DRM’d up the yin-yang. Years later, they gave me the option to purchase a cross platform version for 50% off book price, which was more than I paid for the original, so, yeah, I buy the majority of my music and movie media in physical format.
And yes, I use Plex for my home media server - kindles, iPhones, Android phones, Android Tablets, etc.
The question here looks a lot like the “time-shifting” question of yesteryear, where consumers wanted to record a TV show to watch later. Some producers objected, but IIRC, it was deemed legal, and now it is thought that the copying feature led to the VHS revolution and subsequent consumer DVD market.
Back to today. Anything you can view, you can record. The quality of the recording can vary, from crappy to digitally-perfect. If you can’t (practically or legally) get a copy of the source data, you can record through other means. There are perfectly legal digital audio/video recorders available from $60 to thousands. The only limitation is that you record in real-time (you are “capturing” the data); recorded signal quality and resolution is limited to the signal and resolution supplied.
Most video editors have a screen capture module that doesn’t require an external capture device, although I have found that CPU speeds may limit the frame rate of the captured file. Standalone devices are optimized for this.
Data Video makes a recorder that writes to a USB drive for $500.
This one is only $60. It works very well, even better than the DataVideo. Froogle for “TreasLin Screen Capture Recorder”, or look for capture cards on Amazon.