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I mean Apple's iTunes is at this point one of the only services that lets you "buy" TV shows and movies, and download and "archive"[1] them (for whatever that m
by olliej 3y ago
I mean Apple's iTunes is at this point one of the only services that lets you "buy" TV shows and movies, and download and "archive"[1] them (for whatever that means, when the sony/playstation network is allowed to say "we couldn't agree on licensing terms so you can no longer play what we said you bought"). DVDs are super annoying, I have plenty that I can no longer play because they've physically decayed without even being used in years. Of course a bunch are also region coded so I used to have to have two players, one for my home country, and one for the US. I have no reason to believe Blu-ray is any better in those regards.
[1] The iTunes DRM scheme requires your playback device to have a key, so if you don't have a device with that key you'd have to sign in, and then if apple's contracts prevent them from providing new ones maybe they get stuck in the same position.
- al_borland 3y agoDRM is what prevented me from buying movies on iTunes. Music I bought there, because it was DRM free. As long as DRM exists, it’s only worth renting, imo. “Buying” media with DRM is essentially an expensive long-term rental. It will last as long as the company decides to keep the servers up to support it.
- olliej 3y agoiTunes music isn't drm free?
- sgjohnson 3y agoIt depends. In most cases, if purchased, it is DRM free.
- al_borland 3y agoiTunes music is DRM free. This is for the iTunes Store, not Apple Music (which is for streaming).
- olliej 3y agoIt looks like DRM removal might be a post-2009 thing? (from wikipedia) Music on the iTunes Store was the original use case for the development of the FairPlay DRM scheme (such friendly naming!). It was apparently the SJ "Thoughts on Music" letter that started the end of DRM for purchased music, but my somewhat cynical opinion is that was also the point where streaming was becoming more plausible and streaming services complete undermine everything by explicitly removing the option to buy music.
- al_borland 3y agoRegardless of the reason, removing DRM was a good thing. The DRM free store is still available, and it was done years before Apple got into streaming.