A Cautionary Tale-Missing iTunes Movies

With the recent announcement by Sony that they were removing their entire catalogue from the store, I thought I’d share my similar tale of woe. You may think that the PlayStation Store was never a real front for the purchase of movies, and that it was inevitable that 1700+ TV shows would be removed and all those that purchased them would lose access. You may think that because you purchase your shows through a company like Google or Apple that your collection is safe.

You’d be wrong.

Let me share my situation.

Back in 2020 I bought Source Code on iTunes for $10. Bargain. And as happens with new purchases through Apple, it was immediately placed in my Up Next queue for easy viewing. But I didn’t watch it right away, as I wanted to introduce my daughter to it… and she has a social life. So finding the time to sit down for two hours with her was problematic. But one day, our moment arrived and I slewed across Up Next to where Source Code was located and selected it for viewing.

“Media Not Found”

Da hell is dis? So I jumped into my library to find it there. It wasn’t in my library. I check the email receipt I get from Apple: 30 November 2020, purchased on my iPhone 12 Pro, $9.99. So where is it? A quick Google search and turns out it’s no longer available on the Australian iTunes catalogue, only Microsoft, Fetch and Google have it for sale.

So I had bought the movie. I never had a chance to watch the movie. And now it’s gone. I want my ten bucks back.

So I reached out to Apple to request a refund. I had to try and explain to the Apple representative that my movie was no longer in their catalogue, proving myself with screen shots and screen recordings that it was truly gone. I swear, it was not worth my time for a measly ten dollars, but I have principles. Sort of.

So there I was. I no longer had a copy of Source Code, but at least I was up $10. “But iDan”, I hear you ask, “you should’ve downloaded it from iTunes as a local file while you had the chance”. And you’re right, that was an option. But I bought this particular version for the 4k HDR image with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack, and local downloads are only in 1080p with Dolby Digital 5.1. Additionally, you can’t download to the Apple TV, only to a PC, which I would then need to stream across my local network with Home Sharing. I have Plex for that.

This left a feeling of disgust inside of me. I realised very quickly that purchased digital media is never truly purchased, only borrowed and that is at the whim of the provider for as long as they hold the licencing rights. I’ve since gone back to a disc-based library for the movies I would like to watch again and again, preserved on my shelf. I bought the Panasonic UHD Blu-Ray player, I have a 4K Dolby Vision TV and a Dolby Atmos sound system, and I am completely blown away by how good disc-based films are to their streaming counterparts.

I may still buy the occasional digital format movie, but it won’t be with the eagerness I had before this all happened.