Hacker News Reader

Comment by mttjj | Hacker News Reader

I buy digital movies all the time. Not often at full price because there are sales and deals on iTunes weekly (daily). To me, "buying" a movie for $4.99 or even $8.99 (which is only a dollar or two more than the rental price) is worth it on the off-chance that I may want to watch it again in the future. My digital iTunes movie library is nearing 900 movies at this point. All backed up and downloaded locally so I reduce the risk of what this article is talking about happening to me.

View on HN

damn, you're way ahead of me, almost double my number. I haven't looked into local backups. I'll have to see how that is done (and buy a bigger harddrive.) I didn't really realize that Apple made this possible since I only use an AppleTV to purchase and view movies.

Yeah, unfortunately you can't download the 4K versions. But for me that's an OK tradeoff since I've never once had to use the downloaded version to actually watch something on my AppleTV; everything has still been available in my account for streaming. Not to mention that over half of my library is movies from the 1930s to 1960s - way before 4K was even a concept. So except for a handful of recent movies, I've got the highest form downloaded anyway.

I have a Mac mini that exists almost exclusively to be the backup for all my digital content should I ever need it. All the movies are downloaded to a 14TB external drive which is then cloned to another 16TB external drive and also fully backed up to Backblaze.

Hi, can you explain (or link to) the process you use to download them? Is it manually one-by-one? Or is there a way to batch backup?

Thanks

Use the TV App on macOS. Just go into the list view and right-click on a movie (or multiple) and then you can download it. I let the TV app do all its own folder/library management. I've just configured the library to be on my external drive instead of my internal drive (you can do this from the TV app preferences).

Note that this doesn't remove the DRM or anything like that. This is simply storing a local copy of the iTunes-protected video on your Mac. But if the movie isn't available to stream anymore or your internet is down, you can use Home Sharing on the AppleTV to connect to your Mac and stream the downloaded version.

Awesome, thank you! Have you attempted transferring those backups from one computer to another? (i.e. upgrading from one Mac to the next)

Yes in the sense that I plug in my external hard drive to the new computer and point the new computer's TV app library to the existing library on the external HD. Then it will prompt for authentication the first time I try to play something. After that the movies will play.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com