4K movies from iTunes can be streamed but not downloaded locally
You can rent or purchase 4K movies from iTunes Store, but you cannot download them to your computer like with 1080p and standard-definition content found on Apple’s content store.
According to a support document on Apple’s website, you can download a local copy of a 1080p or standard-definition movie from iTunes to your iPhone, iPad, Mac or PC (Apple TV intelligently caches iTunes movie purchases depending on available storage), just like before.
You cannot, however, download a 4K version of a movie to your Apple device. On surface, this sounds like another annoying limitation. In reality, however, this isn’t a big deal because video content carried on iTunes Store has always been DRM-protected using Apple’s proprietary FairPlay mechanism.
As a result, movies you purchase from iTunes can be played strictly on iPhone, iPad, Mac or PC devices authorized with the same Apple ID account you’ve used to buy them.
Apple is upgrading all of our previous HD movie purchases to 4K versions, where available, completely free of charge—which is unheard of—so I’m guessing this limitation is some sort of concession to content owners in exchange for free HD→4K upgrades.
I doubt the policy indicates a licensing issue. More likely, Hollywood majors are afraid that someone might beat FairPlay encryption so they’ve probably imposed this limitation upon Apple.
Source link: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/09/21/4k-movies-itunes-no-download/
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