Vudu's current owner, Fandango Media, I have a lot less trust in because they have burnt a few bridges with previous digital movies sites (including one of their same brand; they briefly ran a Fandango branded digital movies app that closed without much notice or refunds, to be rebooted as FandangoNOW months later, in part because they bet on UltraViolet and didn't want to just convert UltraViolet purchases to Movies Anywhere like Vudu and iTunes did during that same time). So far Vudu has still seemed to be doing well under the new ownership, but that distrust in the new owner still sews seeds of doubt.
Speaking of Movies Anywhere, that is still an assurance that I trust when making purchase decisions. Even after UltraViolet died, possibly especially because UltraViolet died (and the way at least iTunes and Vudu handled that transition). Movies Anywhere seems to have won out because it is technologically simpler. Plus the Disney backing seems to work in its favor as Disney has some reason to make sure Movies Anywhere does right by families and doesn't tarnish their brand by association. I'm a little less particular which store I buy from if it supports Movies Anywhere. For movies that still aren't yet Movies Anywhere I'm much more cautious. (This was why I avoided Steam's brief foray into movies, for example. They worked with non-Movies Anywhere studios and it didn't feel all that shocking when the experiment failed and Steam stopped selling movies.)
You can un-bless all your other computers (as you can only have 5 computers blessed at once) but I guess if the other computers are offline they can keep playing old downloads.
I don't know if it ever was that way. If it was, something has changed.
During the early months of the pandemic, we carried a Mac mini around that had a ton of downloaded content, and spent a lot of time in places with no internet service. It needed to "re-bless" itself every so often (I don't remember how often - maybe once a month or twice a month - it wasn't very often).
Our solution was to carry it with us when we were near enough to a tower. Using a phone hotspot with just a single bar of bad service, the process took 10-15 seconds.
So as far as tech/media companies go, Apple is almost certainly the least bad option, by a wide margin. But it's not perfect ;)
To be fair, it was a LONG time since stopped buying video from iTunes. Like 5 years at least. I subscribe to a bunch of the streaming services but instead of bothering to figure out exactly where something is streaming I just download it from the Pirate Bay where I know I can find everything right away.
:)
When the "legal" way to do it is self-evidently a scam perpetuated by corporations and governments working together against our interests, then they only honourable ways are either to watch illegal downloads or not watch movies at all.
None of my computers has a DVD drive! Though if I was interested in movies, probably one would.
> You'll likely have a more uniform collection in terms of quality.
Also 4K is useless to me as I have a 1080p monitor.
> It's also probably more honourable, if that's something you really care about.
Helping systems of control that are actively hostile towards me is not honourable, IMO.
Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and Goodwill work pretty well for me.
I don't think any of the other Movies Anywhere apps support sharing/playing the exact same downloaded file, but cross-app downloads are supported (buy on iTunes and download on Xbox Movies or Vudu or whatever).
The DRM does not require being online to verify once it's been set up
Incorrect, Apple did not build the software for all of the listed devices. Apple licenses the protocols and provides reference implementations through their MFi program.
https://help.moviesanywhere.com/hc/en-us/articles/1150045768...
Blu ray players are also locked down and the embedded keys are subject to revocation
In both scenarios the playback support is that the file just gives the credentials for the device with the Apple TV app or Airplay 2 to go and stream it from Apple's servers. No transfer of the video from a local download occurs.
You absolutely can.
A little known service in the US is “Movies Anywhere”. Four of the major studios participate in as well as does Apple, Amazon, Google, Vudu and other platforms. You link all of your accounts and a movie bought on one, automatically is credited to the other accounts as a purchase.
https://help.moviesanywhere.com/hc/en-us/articles/1150045768...
In the past, redownloading movies wasn't even permitted. You download it and save it somewhere yourself. You can still do that to avoid any issues in the future, but I suspect the few incidents that have affected the iTunes Store are unlikely to re-occur. Why? For exactly the reason I mentioned at the beginning, originally you couldn't even re-download movies so it stands to reason the initial transition might've had some licensing loopholes.