I am more than a little disappointed that I can’t download a significant number of rented movies (the 4K ones) from iTunes onto my iPad Pro. I understand that 4K movies take up a huge amount of space, but Apple doesn’t offer standard HD versions of many of its newer titles. Streaming works fine in my home, but I do a lot of traveling and want to be able to download and then watch rented movies on an airplane. Does anyone have suggestions on how to deal with this problem?
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Download movies on 2018 iPad Pro
- Thread starter dlbmacfan
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Sorry, I don't watch 4K movies. I download movies from Netflix, Amazon Prime, and YouTube to take on the go and delete when I'm done. If they're personal / movies I want to keep on my iPad, they're usually in mp4 format and I just transfer them over via iTunes. 1080 is fine for me.
Apple does not allow local copies of any 4K iTunes Movies or TV Series, on any device. This is a concession to the rights holders who fear piracy. It was possibly given up during the same talks where they obtained the free upgrade to 4K for existing HD purchases.
You will have to wait or transfer DRM-free files via iTunes on macOS/Windows.
You will have to wait or transfer DRM-free files via iTunes on macOS/Windows.
Can you share an example where a 4K version is available, but a 1080p version is not? I can’t find examples of this and own many 4K titles that are downloadable in 1080p on my iPad. I also can’t imagine them not having a 1080p version for supporting the Apple TV - 4th gen (prior to the 4K version) - no way is Apple just offering SD for those customers.
What exactly is the problem? For your 4K titles, you can download 1080P versions with HDR, the resulting file will be at least 2X the normal HD download size, to account for the HDR metadata. Should look spectacular on any iPad Pro (the only iPads that support HDR).
You can’t download the 4K, period. Whatever you download will be HD (plus potentially HDR). Just hit the “download” button, and you’ll get HD.
I don't mind not being able to download 4K movies onto my iPad Pro. But I couldn't download either of these two movies period. Senior tech support was not able to figure out what was going on.
What happened when you pressed the download button? I have never heard of anyone having an issue like this, so it might be unique to you. Hope you get it sorted.
I got a message saying unable to download on both of the movies. but I had no problem downloading The Godfather.
Would love to see a screenshot - storage isn’t an issue plenty of space? On a good WiFi network when trying this?
Any screenshots or examples of movies this happens with - I own almost 900 iTunes movies and have yet to have this issue and would love to test on my own hardware.
Gotcha - while I don’t own either - the iTunes Store does clearly share the download size of 1080p and 720p versions of the movie - see attached - so yea something odd is going on - again I would double check storage space and make sure iCloud Photo Library or something else didn’t fill up your 256GB somehow -
Attachments
Doesn’t sound like the issue is storage size and you should be able to get the HD versions of any 4K movie.
Can’t recall right now, but pretty sure you get a different message when it’s storage relatedness.
Can’t recall right now, but pretty sure you get a different message when it’s storage relatedness.
Just for fun I tried this movie as well. I can stream it fine, but I get the same error for downloading it, which is weird as I download movies all the time. Probably a rental vs. owning issue.
@dlbmacfan Is there a chance you're currently in another country? Sometimes rentals/libraries get weird if you're overseas because of film licensing in other countries. If you are, you might try a VPN set to US and see if that works, but this is a shot in the dark, I'm assuming you're already in the US and something's fishy with that film in particular.
I'm not trying to download 4K, and I do live in the USA. I can't even download the SD version, much less the HD version. I just got a call from a senior iTunes support person, and they think there's a problem on their end. I'll post an update when I have more information.