Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Over the past couple of days I’ve been keeping tabs on the SpaceX/NASA launch of the Dragon module to the International Space Station. This is the first time in nine years that a manned space mission has launched from the United States using US hardware, and in conjunction with a private company.
And it was spectacular. The first thing that struck me was how minimalistic the space suits were. They’re almost fashioned in a Thunderbirds-style uniform (albeit the astronauts still need to wear a helmet). As for the Dragon module itself, it too is very minimalistic. All touch-screen displays with very few physical buttons. It’s as if 2020 finally caught up technology wise (though marred with the the awfulness going on in the world right now, it has to be said that those two astronauts are two very lucky buggers escaping Earth for a short while).
While I was waiting for the module (now nicknamed Endeavour) to rendevouz with the International Space Station (ISS), I decided to take the opportunity to watch Netflix’s Space Force, created by Steve Carrell and The (US) Office’s Greg Daniels (who also manages Amazon Prime’s excellent TV series, Upload – think of that one as a funnier, yet bleak version of Black Mirror’s San Junipero.)
While Space Force lampoons a certain president’s mad ambitions to conquer space for the US, the message (and mission) is by and large a good one – to work with others to put humanity out there in space. By co-operating with each other rather than going against each other – and at the same time, treat the planet with respect. However, it doesn’t exactly start out that way.
We have Steve Carell’s Mark Naird, a four star general who is promoted to lead the Space Force division. His experience in the army leads him to make rash decisions and ignore the advice of the science team. In the first episode, a $6 billion project is in jeopardy because the science guys are not confident of a successful launch and the chief scientist (played by John Malkovich) goes out of his way to persuade Naird to abort due to weather conditions. After struggling with incompetent and annoying members of staff, advisory boards, etc. (which is why the show partly reminds me of Veep) he eventually decides to launch. He comes to realise that this is a job where you need to balance risk. The launch is a success, but is ultimately sabotaged by.. well, let’s say it gets messy.
The second episode is pure delight, and features some of the best VFX in a TV series second only to The Mandalorian. Weta FX provides a fully mocapped space chimp which was abandoned (along with a dog) as part of an earlier mission. The chimp is still alive, but hungry, and General Naird – through a sign language interpreter – has to get the chimp to try and re-attach the solar panels of the module that was launched in the last episode that were cut off by a rival nation. And the chimp has to do all this with only a promise of a non-existent banana, or a human baby (or chimp). After 3 hours of getting the chimp to pick the right tool, he goes out into space – and well, some of the finest comedy involving a drill and weightlessness ensues.
Space Force is incredibly funny. It is poignant. It highlights bureaucracy (both good and bad) of a space programme, and the potential dangers of weaponizing space. Let’s hope that doesn’t become a real thing. The SpaceX/NASA collaboration is wonderful thing to behold, for the right reasons. But let’s not turn it into something destructive.
I have recently bought the single biggest mechanical hard drive I have ever owned, or want to own. The reason for this is simple. Apple’s Media Services is a state of flux, dithering between downloads and streaming. It sells movies that you can stream from any of your Apple devices. Anywhere. Anytime. Going where there is no internet? Download it!
Surely Apple doesn’t expect you to download ALL your movies and TV shows – it takes up so much space?! With internal drives for MacBook Pros costing up to £2k for 8Tb, nobody is going to have all that money to keep their digital movie and TV collection on their Mac, safe and sound?
Apple recommends that you download your purchases because they told me (but they never make it clear in any of their advertising, nor through the user interfaces of their online stores) that titles can be pulled from the local iTunes store for a variety of reasons and unless you’ve downloaded your purchase, you’ll lose it forever. This, despite people buying digital content and streaming content directly from Apple’s servers – as this is the easiest way, and indeed, the way it was designed to be so. Rarely does a computer enter into the whole purchase thing. Got an Apple TV device? Just buy straight from your armchair. Buy from your iPhone or iPad. Easy.
Apple iTunes Store movie purchases are only downloadable up to HD quality only. Any advertised features such as 4K and iTunes Extras cannot be downloaded – they’re streamable only.
Still, I have nearly 500 movies in my collection which would be a considerable pain in the arse to store as physical media in the small house I live in. So I really ought to back up everything I got. Having something is better than nothing.
I looked at a number of options:
NAS device with at least 8Tb capacity, in RAID 1 configuration to ensure that both drives are mirrored simulataneously in case one drive fails.
Multiple WD Passport bus-powered 5Tb drives, splitting movies and TV shows across each device, and backing each one up to Amazon’s S3 Deep Glacier which charges just $1/Tb per month.
Single big drive, along with multiple WD Passport bus-powered drives to back up movies and TV shows separately as a backup.
The problem with the NAS device is that the enclosure alone is pricey. And that’s without any disks. Add the disks and it becomes very expensive. And the disks themselves are not going to be fast. So copying nearly 4Tb of data off the WD Passport 4Tb bus-powered, 5,400RPM drive I was using to back up everything was not going to be fast.
I looked at the Western Digital MyBook Duo range of drives, eyeing up a massive 24Tb beast. The advantage here is that the drives are WD Reds which are best designed for long term use, plus with the MyBook Duo enclosure, you can swap the drives out easily – and even upgrade. Downside was that the enclosure is plastic, plus there were many reports of it overheating as a result of that (though these reports go back to 2017/2018), and it was noisy. Plus they wanted £530 for it. And the disk performance wasn’t exactly great, either.
I started looking at Western Digital’s new WD_BLACK range. These are designed primarily for gamers, incorporating fast storage and plenty of capacity. What really caught my eye with the WD_Black D10 Game Drive for the Xbox One: 7,200RPM 3.5″ drive rated up to 250MB/S and a USB 3.2 gen 1 interface. The drive can be positioned horizontally (it has rubber feet) or vertically (comes with a stand).
WD_BLACK D10 Game Drive for Xbox One. Xbox One is purely optional.
Interestingly, the type of drives installed in these units appear to be datacentre-grade drives that are typically found in servers (Ultrastar DC 500 series drives, apparently). This means that they will keep up with demanding performance from reading/writing, and for a long time. And it was a bargain at £262. The only downside is that the drive comes with a 3-year limited warranty rather than the Ultrastar’s typical 5-year warranty.
So I bought one. Plus it came with 3 months Xbox One Game Pass Ultimate, so that’s extended my subscription to February 2021 (in case anybody’s wondering: the Xbox One Game pass is very much worthwhile if you’re an Xbox owner).
And I absolutely love the drive. The downside was that the WD Passport drive was so slow in transferring data, it was quicker to download the whole 4Tb from Apple’s servers. That took 2 days. But the drive performance is indeed excellent, reaching up to around 215MB/S write and 235MB/S read during my own tests.
3.9Tb of iTunes Store movie and TV show purchases
Apple’s Apple TV app on macOS Catalina is a massive pain in the arse, however. It’s so fragile about where data is stored. Get something every so slightly wrong and you’d need to download the movie/TV show again even if it exists on the filesystem. As I don’t have the drive going all the time, I created a new library by pressing the Option key down when opening the Apple TV app. I created a new library on the external drive and downloaded everything from there. The Mac and the drive were on for two solid days, and the D10 drive never once felt hot. Warm, yes, but never hot – and this is in the horizontal position.
What I need to remember is if I want to use the Apple TV app when the external drive is off, I need to press Option whilst opening the app to select the local internal SSD library. However, Apple TV seems very insistent on holding on to an internal database file which results in this:
This crops up (even in macOS Catalina 10.15.5) when Apple TV app isn’t running
and the only way to get around is to determine the process ID of whatever is holding onto the TV library database and kill it off:
I love UNIX.
which then allows me to open the other library. I’m not sure what effect killing off the process like that has on the internal Apple TV library, but so far I’ve found no ill effects. But it does suggest that maybe Apple needs to spend a bit more time working on closing files when the application closes..
So the drive is proving itself worthy. But isn’t it a single point of failure? Yes. But I intend to buy another one and clone this drive to it, keeping the second drive as a backup. And maybe later down the road, getting a MyBook Duo or NAS as an additional backup. Speed won’t matter too much, and it’ll just sit in the corner being idle for large amounts of time.
Speaking of backups, Apple’s Time Machine has become a massive pain in the arse, and I’ve stopped using it. In its place I’m using Acronis’ True Image 2020 which is so much faster, provides versioning and tidying up of versions older than X days/months old. It backs up to the 12Tb drive, naturally, and gives me plenty of space for a good while alongside the media library.
Acronis True Image 2020 for Mac – a better Time Machine replacement
Before the internet entered our everyday lives.. Bob Hoskins convinced us to keep on talking
The one thing about this pandemic and being in isolation is that we’ve never been more reliant on technology to keep in touch with each other.
Ever since I was little and got my hands on my first computer, a ZX81 that my dad borrowed from a neighbour, and having got my mind and grubby little mitts around the Telex system at my dad’s work (he’d let me type them up and send them – often many would go to clients in Japan), I was enamoured with computer networks and communication systems.
When the internet became prominent in the 90s, I started to get heavily involved with web design, I.T. consultation (writing a recommendation for a wireless network system for a national African insurance company – it was actually cheaper than a wired system, believe it or not), and systems administration work. I effectively dropped out of university to work with the internet, helping set-up and run a Norwich-based ISP. All dial-up – ADSL would be a good few years away back then.
Back in those days, social media was barely a thing. Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) were transitioning from dial-up only systems to the internet – these were the forerunners to internet forums – communities usually formed around a particular theme (such as computing, films, etc.). Usenet was a big thing – a global group of text-based forums where people could subscribe to, create posts, read posts and reply to them. You had to access them via a dedicated program on your computer as they were not generally web-based back then. Arguments about certain topics or people (aka flame wars) were a problem, but they were much less severe than they are now. In fact, everything back then was practically better – the fewer the people online, the less of a problem it was. Email spam was rare, DoS attacks were also pretty rare too. People generally, for the most part, behaved themselves.
Mobile phones were still pretty basic in the 90s – essentially limited to making phone calls, sending very limited text messages and playing ludicrously simple games. Cell coverage was pretty limited too, making it very difficult to get hold of people if they weren’t close enough to one of the few mobile phone masts.
Now?
We’re pretty much a 24/7 day, always on-call, always available society. We have more social networks than family members, mobile phones that are as powerful as our own desktop/laptop computers, superfast home broadband (well, there is room for improvement there), Wi-Fi is practically everywhere. It is fair to say that as a society, we are the most connected we have ever been.
And I’m finding it a bit of a struggle. My attempts to rejoin Twitter and start from scratch earlier this year were a noble one – just stick myself into read mode and post occasionally. Keep it light. Keep it non-controversial. I’d then find I miss particular people, then start adding them back into my feed. And before long it was practically my old account, just with fewer people I’m following, and with fewer followers. And it is still a trigger: so many political posts, so much anger about big and small things. A great deal matters, and yet so little does.
So I’m back off Twitter again. Hopefully for good. I need to keep my sanity about me.
Facebook has also been a bit of pain over the past few years too, but never at the kind of scale Twitter can get to. I’ve never really used it much – even back in the heyday when everybody shared everything with each other. But I will admit that over the past year it’s allowed me to keep in touch with family that bit better – my cousins, my sister, my aunts and uncle, old friends and colleagues – we’re all on Facebook. Even if Facebook is a data mining succubus, it has a genuine usefulness to it. Though with work and being on-call, it has proven difficult to switch off and sometimes I switch off in the wrong direction (e.g. friends and family rather than work) – and for that I am truly sorry. But the past few days on Facebook though have been fantastic, though – an old friend from school has found old cassette tapes that we used to produce for each other – a kind of radio show mixed with music and comedy – and uploaded them for me to listen. It brought back very fond memories, and I have to say that the quality of the comedy is on par with some of the stuff some so-called comedians pump out these days.
As I’ve said – the possibilities of the internet and communication back in the 90’s were so exciting and new. And here in 2020 it just makes me want to become a digital hermit at times, and especially within this pandemic which has promoted all this technology to become our primary method with talking to, and staying in touch with, our friends, family and work colleagues. Working in I.T. has paid off dividends over the years, but at the same time it does kind of extract a kind of toll.
In any event, I’m still here. Blogging, at the very least. I am a proud blogger even if I’m not particularly good at it. I was proud when Neil Gaiman(*) who introduced me to his friends as a blogger at a screening. It gives me a sense of value despite maybe not having such a good grasp on the English language or grammar as I’d like or should do (I blame the educmacation system, D’OH). Nor the patience for pease pudding, I mean proof reading.
Something that I watched recently on Apple TV+ struck home with me: Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet – Quarantine Special. While it is incredibly funny (this is the show that’s keeping me as an AppleTV+ subscriber), there was one moment when Poppy, who is the chief engineer at the game development company that features in the show, breaks down and cries – admitting to her boss Ian that she’s not okay. She’s single, she lives by herself and she isn’t coping very well in isolation. I had enormous empathy for her at that moment (and maybe a tear or three was shed). But as I have always been a bit of a loner, even while I was married, I tend to cope with things a bit better in these circumstances. Certainly I haven’t gotten to that point yet.
(*) (who made the news recently after travelling 12,000 miles from New Zealand to his own home in Skye – I don’t blame him at all for this given the circumstances and he did explain that he used every conceivable precaution going, but again, given the internet, the reaction was not at all pleasant and much Twitter blocking occurred – hence why I’ve quit, Twitter is far too toxic, and far too easy to enrage people and become enraged yourself.)
I realise that I’m starting to sound like a broken record at this point, but being able to easily back up, retain and watch movie and TV purchases from the iTunes store is important to me – and it should be for anybody who regularly uses the iTunes store.
I’m struggling to understand Apple’s approach to how it stores and manages music, movies and TV show purchases through the iTunes store. Apple is actively promoting the iTunes Store’s ability to buy and watch purchases everywhere because it stores everything you purchase on its own servers.
But they have the right to remove content at any time and strongly advocate that you need to download it so you can keep your purchase. However, with that comes some major disadvantages: you lose 4K and you lose iTunes Extras if they come with the film. It takes away a lot of the features that attract people to the platform (name me any other online video retailer that offers audio commentaries and featurettes). Apple needs to significantly improve in this area because it’s not inspiring consumer confidence in cloud computing and services if content you’ve bought is removed without knowledge or compensation, leaving either nothing or significantly less than what you bough. Cloud computing something Apple is keen to increase its interest in, especially after it’s been revealed that Apple has gone on a hiring spree.
To avoid you having to go through my previous rambling rants, I’ll summarise the key points here as I understand the situation:
Apple can remove any music, movie or TV show title you’ve purchased from your library at any time, for any reason. The most likely explanation is the ownership of copyright has changed rights owners and Apple hasn’t been granted permission to continue selling that title. Apple doesn’t give any notice if this happens. Nor are you entitled to any kind of refund or compensation. Then again, it’s also possible that you could potentially still access your purchase. In summary: it’s effectively completely random as to whether you keep your purchase with all its features to stream or download from Apple’s servers. You might keep a title forever, a week, a month, a year, 5 years, 10 years. You just don’t know.
Apple recommends downloading and backing up your purchased media content. Music purchases are DRM-free, usually small, and this is usually no problem for the majority of people to keep backups of their music files. Movies and TV shows, on the other hand, are large, multi-gigabyte files which are DRM protected, meaning that this restricts playback to your Apple account and devices that you own. iPhones, iPads, Macs and Windows machines can playback downloaded movies and TV shows. If they’re not downloaded, they’re streamed from Apple’s servers. iTunes Extras after the 10th July, 2014 are streaming only and cannot be downloaded. 4K content is streaming only, restricted to certain devices, and cannot be downloaded. So they cannot be backed up.
Apple TV HD and 4K devices are streaming devices only. iTunes purchases are not officially supported being accessed from NAS devices. Home Share doesn’t seem to support a new movie/TV show container format that I’ve found which is being used for newer titles in the iTunes Store. AirPlay should be used to stream to an Apple TV device from an iPhone, iPad and Mac/Windows machines if the title is not available anymore from Apple’s servers. Again, a reminder: you will lose access to 4K (if it was offered in that format) and iTunes Extras if the film is pulled from Apple’s servers. Your movie download only consists of the HD movie (or SD if not available in HD).
iTunes purchases downloaded to iPad and iPhone are not backed up if the device is set to only backup to iCloud. You’d need to connect your device to a computer running iTunes and macOS Catalina and back up the entire contents of the device there.
It should be noted that the terms of Apple’s Media Services are extremely ambiguous (for example, streaming is barely mentioned – just “redownloads”) and in my initial dealings with Apple Support, it feels as if they’re making excuses on the spot to get around their flawed and consumer unfriendly policies.
So, with regards to not being able to play newer iTunes movie purchases through Home Share (to test backup strategies), I reached out to Apple Support on a separate ticket and used examples such as Warner Bros. Birds of Prey, Lionsgate’s Knives Out and Warner Bros. Joker. All recent films, and all appear to use a new container format (HLS) when downloaded from the iTunes Store to a computer via the Apple TV app (on macOS Catalina). I discuss the symptoms on my previous post.
Apple Support and I have had some interesting conversations about this – nearly 90 minutes spent on the phone. The first revelation is that Apple does not officially support Network Attached Drives (or NAS). So if anybody is using Synology or similar NAS tech to share media libraries with an Apple (TV) device – Apple won’t support you.
The second was that AirPlay is the recommended method by which to play this type of content to the Apple TV. From your Mac, iPhone or iPad, you start playing the content and select the AirPlay symbol, select the device you want to stream it to, and it starts playing there.
The trouble with downloading content to an iPad and iPhone is the limited space available, and you’d still need to back the whole device up to a computer (Mac or Windows) to be able to backup any purchased media content because it won’t be backed up to the iCloud.
So what you really need to back up your movies and TV shows is a Mac (I can’t speak for Windows too much because I have no idea at what state it has move on from iTunes and transitioned to separate apps like the Mac) – but you need to either download the entire library to your Mac’s internal SSD/HD, or to an external drive. If the latter, you’d have to find your own way of ensuring that you have backups of that drive. Apple recommends using Time Machine to back up the Apple’s internal drive(s), though (again, see previous post) – this doesn’t always yield favourable results and I had to rely on the Apple cloud to restore everything for Apple Music. I only hope it was because of the separation of iTunes and library folder layout which was the problem (dramatically different layouts when I compared my Time Machine backup to that of the new Apple Musics app).
Note: Any iTunes Extras content made after 10th July, 2014 cannot be downloaded – it’s streaming only. So if Apple pulls the plug on a title, you’ll only have access to the file(s) containing the movie (up to HD quality only).
What Apple told me about the HLS container files is that it’s possible that the DRM is preventing playback on the Apple TV device via Home Share. If so, that’s crazy – especially as I’m using an all Apple ecosystem. And that this is not a bug. Regardless of whether it is or isn’t (I say isn’t), it seems that me that Home Sharing could be for the chop in a later tvOS/macOS. If it’s not able to handle these new container formats, it makes future iTunes purchases impossible to play via Home Share. Obviously one would use the Apple cloud service to stream in all cases where possible – but if Apple removes the content (without notice), you’ll be forced to use the method described above.
UPDATE (19th May, 2020) – the issue of the HLS package download can be resolved by going to Preferences->Playback in the Apple TV app in macOS Catalina and ensuring that Download Multichannel Audio and Download HDR when available are both unticked.
I’ve still yet to hear back from Apple why this has to be done, and why Apple TV devices can’t see the HLS format (and what good does it do anyway if the download has no effect whatsoever).
Fix .movpkg / HLS file downloads in Apple TV app by deselecting the above
I’ve asked Apple Support to continue investigating and raise this accordingly with the technical engineering teams responsible. But I still say that Apple needs to keep all previous iTunes Store purchases on Apple’s servers even if the seller has pulled the title from the Apple platform – unless it is a genuine mistake by the seller, and then compensation needs to be organised accordingly. I don’t care about the legalities of this – and neither should the average consumer – we shouldn’t care about what licenses or agreements Apple has with their sellers. Keep the purchases on Apple servers indefinitely!
Downloading and managing files is the very least thing I want to be doing – I chose Apple because the process of purchasing and watching movies and TV content across multiple devices using their servers is quick and convenient. When you start to bring in backups (and only half-arsed backups at that due to the strange download/streaming hybrid Apple has found itself in), it becomes inconvenient and you see the cracks in the system that Apple has spent decades building up.
It also has to be said that we really need better consumer law surrounding digital content and protecting consumer purchases – especially if it’s being stored in the cloud.
Well, pretty much. They wash their hands of any responsibility, pocketing your money without a clear and concise method of allowing customers to back up their purchases, and without retaining the full feature set (essentially the 4K element and any iTunes Extras if they come with them).
The senior advisor at Apple keeps referring to the right to cancellation, but this isn’t the case at all. I did not cancel. Apple (and remember my contract is with them, not the studio or distributor) took my money for a purchase, not a rental, and then removed the film from its servers without any notice, or refund or partial refund. This insist everybody should be downloading their purchases.
So what if I did download all movies? Can I play my entire iTunes/Apple TV library through Home Sharing?
No.
I decided to enable Home Sharing on my MacBook Pro (which has moved from the apps into System Preferences -> Sharing -> Media Sharing). I’ve downloaded a number of films that I think could be at risk from being removed from Apple’s stores by the distributor for whatever reason. And to that, I added the most recent Warner Bros. film, Bird of Prey, which is offered with iTunes Extras and – more importantly for my test – 4K/HDR. According to Apple TV’s app, HDR download is actually supported!
You can download HDR movies, but not 4K ones
This is what I can see in the Downloads section of my Apple TV app on macOS Catalina:
The Apple TV store allowed me to buy a movie twice when it wasn’t able to find an existing purchase.
Note that you’ll see two copies of Amelie there. Two reasons for this that I can ascertain. The first is that the Apple TV app on macOS Catalina is utterly bloody useless. I was quite panicy that Amelie had been removed. Turns out that’s not the case, but the Apple TV store itself didn’t think it was the same version I had already purchased and downloaded, so offered it for me to buy. Which I did. And that’s when I found out that I’ve bought exactly the same content twice. No safeguards at all.
Anyway, when I went and enabled Home Sharing on the Apple TV (which is the 4K device, and running the latest non-beta version of tvOS), I see all the regular HD content, but not Birds of Prey. Surely logic dictates that although I cannot download the 4K version of the title, the Apple TV should still see an HD version of it? Well, it can’t. It sees nothing.
Well, this convinces me to buy a NAS, it really does. (facepalm)
The files for Bird of Prey are definitely sitting on my Mac:
Why won’t a downloaded copy of Birds of Prey work with Apple TV via Home Share?
Yet my copy of What We Left Behind, an excellent documentary on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is available. That’s available in 4K on the Apple TV if I play it directly from Apple’s servers. Via the download on Home Sharing, it will only play in HD. The downside is that the iTunes Extras are missing. So no, you cannot make adequate backups of your movies, Apple.
Apple’s iTunes/Apple TV store (whatever the hell they call it these days) is massively misleading. The “advice” I’ve received from Apple’s support is both wrong and deceptive.
Home sharing is set-up correctly on the Mac
I’ll tell you something else about Apple and backups: when macOS Catalina came on the scene, removing iTunes and replacing it with separate apps, I struggled substantially to get my music library working with a new Mac. Something between iTunes and Apple Music had changed which meant there were syncing issues with the Apple Music subscription. I tried manually importing the music files. I tried restoring a Time Machine backup. No joy. In the end, I had to rely on the music in Apple’s cloud to download and use that as the backup moving forward.
(Well, more of a mugging than a robbery, I suppose)
Yesterday evening I was looking for something to watch. Something I hadn’t seen in a while. I was sure I had purchased it, but according to the Apple TV app running on macOS Catalina 10.15.4.1, it wasn’t able to find it when I did a search.
But I did find it within my library when sorted alphabetically. Phew! It just looked as if Apple was no longer selling that particular title. But at least I could stream and download it. That title was Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s MicMacs, a wonderfully comic French film about the arms industry (got to love the French sense of humour!).
Oh, really? Tell that to the Apple TV app on macOS Catalina and Apple removing content without notice
But I decided that I’d leave it until I’m off on holiday next week when I can really start binging on movies (many of whom were purchased via Apple’s iTunes store recently) – I’ve got:
Knives Out
Once upon a Time in Hollywood
Rocketman
Birds of Prey
as well as a few older titles that I’ve not seen in a while that were on sale.
While I was reminiscing over Sylvain Chomet‘s The Illusionist (which is based on an unproduced Jacques Tati script, and was directly responsible for me falling in love with the city of Edinburgh and have not regretted it since), I thought about his other film, Attila Marcel. I hadn’t seen that for a very long while, and thought it’d make for a good evening’s viewing.
ALAS!
Like MicMacs, I couldn’t see it in Apple TV’s search function. What was worse: I couldn’t see it listed alphabetically in the library either. Yet I was damn sure I bought it on iTunes.
Thankfully Apple keeps all orders and invoices going back many years – though they could consider introducing a text search function within the Apple TV and Apple Music apps to make it easier to find particular titles – otherwise it’s you need to do a LOT of scrolling. That, plusan export function for any and all invoices as CSV or Excel format.
I managed to find the original order/invoice:
So that confirms I wasn’t going stark raving mad (entirely possible during this lockdown phase). Tried to go through the usual route of reporting a problem with Apple, but the order was so old. I managed to set-up a generic support ticket with Apple Support. After an hour or two I got a reply:
It’s important to note that I quoted the original order ID when establishing contact. I replied to say that I’ve never hidden any purchases and gave them a screenshot to prove there was nothing being hidden. I then received the following:
Effectively:
“The content provider decided to stop selling their movie on our platform, and either we don’t have the file or are not allowed to give it out – even if you’ve purchased it.”
Where it gets unnecessarily complicated is that Apple sells the Apple TV 4K device which has limited storage – 32Gb or 64Gb. They also sell the iPhone which has a maximum storage capacity of 512Gb. They also have the iPad which goes all the way up to 1Tb. My entire Apple TV/iTunes library sits in around 1.75Tb. And until recently my MacBook Pros have only had a maximum of 1Tb of internal storage – and half of that was being used by Apple Photos and project work.
The entire point of buying from the likes of Apple is to make it easy to access and view my film collection (haha, I’m trying to find another word for collection as it’s not really such if some swine can just come along remove stuff from it at any time without my permission or notice) via the Apple TV device, my iPhone, my iPad or my MacBook Pro.
In the UK, the fair use law prevents us legally from ripping content from physical media that we’ve purchased. Apple seems the best option – especially as they generally give you a similar set of extra features content that you’d find on a DVD or Blu-Ray release.
Now, even if I download all ~4Tb of my content to my Mac and back that content up either to the likes of Backblaze or an external hard drive or NAS, I cannot download the 4K version of the film, nor the iTunes Extras content. Then we have issues of presenting films that have been removed from iTunes like Attila Marcel to the Apple TV, iPhone and iPad. There are options for this:
AirPlay (think Google’s Chromecast)
Home Share (sharing media library direct from Mac or NAS)
But this isn’t a consistent or nice experience – something that Apple does so very well in almost all other areas of the business.
Some questions:
Why Apple doesn’t inform you of any content that’s about to be removed from your library?
Apple has seriously screwed the pooch because there is a difference between download and streaming, which is the heart of the matter here (and especially so with the Apple TV device). I keep the movies in their “cloud” to save space and to be able to stream because I generally always have the bandwidth to do so. There is very little need for me to download an entire movie. I think this applies to the vast majority of Apple’s customers, too. This hybrid download/streaming system is an utter mess.
Apple’s own storefront web site makes absolutely no mention that content can be withdrawn. This is what it has to say (at the time of writing, 5th May 2020):
Oh, really?
“Buy. Rent. Watch. All inside the app. Welcome to the new home of thousands of films, including the latest blockbusters from iTunes. Now you can buy, rent and watch, all from inside the app — as well as watch everything you’ve previously purchased from iTunes.”
But Apple has done a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy style maneuver. To quote from the book written by Douglas Adams, who was a big fan of Apple:
“But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
The search for Apple’s Terms of Service in a nutshell
Apple’s Terms of Service (which, strangely, I found only through a third party web stite) only stipulate redownloads, NOT streaming – which is how I use iTunes/Apple TV content. Again, we’re back to the problem which is a legacy hangover from the early days of iTunes where you had to download everything to be able to watch it. Then the iPhone, the iPad and Apple TV came along. Especially the Apple TV which MUST stream the content.
You may be able to redownload previously acquired Content (“Redownload”) to your devices that are signed in with the same Apple ID (“Associated Devices”). You can see Content types available for Redownload in your Home Country at https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204632. Content may not be available for Redownload if that Content is no longer offered on our Services.
Associated Devices Rules (except Apple Arcade): You can have up to ten devices (but only a maximum of five computers) signed in with your Apple ID at one time. Each computer must also be authorised using the same Apple ID (to learn more about authorisation of computers, visit https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201251). Devices can be associated with a different Apple ID once every 90 days.
Associated Devices Rules for Apple Arcade: You can have up to 10 devices signed in to Apple Arcade per Family member at one time. Devices can be associated with a different Apple ID once every 90 days.
Redownloads vs streaming – nowt mentioned about streaming, necessary for Apple TV
The link in the above only mentions general availability of Apple Media Services. It does not mention the conditions in which content may be removed (and event then, only referring to downloadable content), nor that you will not be notified that the content is no long available.
Not if they’ve pulled the title from their servers you can’t. Be prepared for fiddling with file transfers and AirPlay instead – and extra features going missing as they’re streaming only and can’t be downloaded.
i. Availability of Purchased Digital Content. Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be available to you for download or streaming from the Service, as applicable, but may become unavailable due to potential content provider licensing restrictions or for other reasons, and Amazon will not be liable to you if Purchased Digital Content becomes unavailable for further download or streaming.
Amazon’s Terms for “buying” digital movie or TV content from them – this is very clearly set out: don’t use them for buying film or TV content.
Amazon have made it very clear anything you “buy” from them can vanish at any point. That they don’t have to give you any notice. That they owe you nothing if this occurs. Apple’s terms are more ambiguous because it merely states “redownloads”. Yet the service is primary a streaming service; downloads are a legacy from when iTunes first started when streaming wasn’t available and which just happens to be convenient these days for going offline (for travelling).
Why Apple doesn’t offer an immediate refund or compensation if content is removed – people make the assumption that if you purchase something from these services, they have access to it indefinitely. There’s no big massive asterisk next to the purchase button warning you about Apple or the content provider’s ability to remove the film from your cloud library. It should not be considered an extended rental. If you buy a physical CD, DVD or Blu-Ray – you don’t have somebody turn up at your doorstep from the shop that sold it to you and demand it back because their supplier no longer sells to them. Just because something is intangible should not bring about Houdini style hijinks.
Why Apple hasn’t thought about and solved this problem already? There have been sporadic reports of content being removed from people’s libraries since at least 2013.
If Apple can’t sold this problem technically, then why doesn’t it try to resolve this through its significant legal resources and the major film studios and distributors? If Apple truly is a consumer champion, dedicated to the likes of privacy et. al, it needs to be seen doing a heck of a lot more for protecting consumer’s rights. (Ironic, given the whole right to repair fiasco which is stil ongoing.)
There are plenty more articles about this, but the point is that in an age where we’re relying more and more on cloud services (including storage), it seems highly unreasonable for Apple to expect us to download every single title we buy from them and keep it somewhere local.
I’ve reach out further to Apple Support and Tim Cook to see what they have to say on the matter and have asked them what they intend to do in the future to protect consumers’ purchases. Apple needs to resolve its issue with the legacy iTunes stuff because it’s now becoming a major problem. Until then, I’m extremely damn nervous to buy anything more from the Apple TV/iTunes store knowing that at any time a content provider can pull the plug just like that.
I’d reach out to Metrodome who distributes (or at least did) Atilla Marcel and ask them what the bloody hell they’re playing at, even though my contract for the purchase is with Apple. But they went into administration in 2016. Maybe the rights reverted to Pathé? Though this doesn’t explain why it has taken this long for the title to be removed from iTunes – I’m pretty sure it was still there at the end of last year (2019). In any event, Amazon’s Prime Video has the title to rent or buy. I may reach out to Pathé and ask them what the hell THEY’RE playing at – especially as there a good number of titles from them happily existing on iTunes that I “own”.
Apple, live up to your creed: Think Different. Yet just don’t think different – do something!
BTW, when the BBC Store closed down, I had around £150 worth of purchases refunded to me in its entirety by BBC Worldwide PLUS a voucher for Amazon which could be used to buy physical or digital content by way of an apology. More companies – especially Apple – need to take note.
43 (nearly 44) year old man still collecting Star Wars figures
Disney+ in the UK has finally released all eight chapters of The Mandalorian, the first ever live action Star Wars TV series, and I’ve got to say that in all my years of following the Star Wars films: this TV show is the dog’s knackers.
Jon Favreau, who created the series as well as wrote the majority of the episodes, has done an absolutely fantastic job of creating a modern Western in space (or maybe a better analogy – a modern Eastern, since a lot of it aligns itself similarly to Lone Wolf and Cub, as well as the Seven Samurai).
The plot follows a bounty hunter (much like Boba Fett) belonging to the Mandalorian clan (they’re not a species, but more of a creed) who takes a job tracking down and retrieving somebody who is only described as being 50 years old. But this is no ordinary job. The client (played by Werner Herzog) offers the bounty hunter (Mando, we’ll call him for now) a significant bounty if he brings him back alive.
The Child (aka Baby Yoda)
The target happens to be a child. Albeit one that ages extremely slowly. As far as we know, this is the same species as Jedi Master Yoda (hence the nickname) – though Mando doesn’t know that. After finding and rescuing the child, Mando can’t bear to leave the kid with the client, whom he suspects is torturing him/running experiments, so after he pockets the reward (which he turns into protective armour), he rescues the kid – which results in him being banished from the bounty hunter’s guild and making many enemies in the process. They both go on the run.
Throughout the course of the series, we see Baby Yoda demonstrate remarkable feats of Force power, much to the amazement of Mando and his rag-tag team that he assembles to bring down an Imperial warlord (played by Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul’s Giancarlo Esposito).
The show is an extraordinary testament to what can now be achieved in television production: the visual effects, the sound design, sets, puppets/creature effects.- everything that you’d expect to see in a major Hollywood movie. It’s shot anamorphically too – with two big black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, giving it a true cinematic quality. All split across 8 30-minute “chapters”.
It’s funny. It’s exciting. It’s exhilarating. The Mandalorian is a joy to watch. Some would argue 30 minutes is too short, and I’d agree to an extent – though what they manage cram into those 30 minutes ensures that everything remains fresh and keeps on moving.
The Mandalorian has been the best thing on TV in ages, and I can’t wait to see season two when it airs in October.
Once these cretins start blocking Disney, which has been doing the same thing (perhaps even more aggressively than Universal, though they have not said or committed to anything regarding future simultaneous theatrical/VoD releases when cinemas open, with the one exception being the forthcoming Artemis Fowl movie which WILL be streaming only via Disney+) – these cinema chains will effectively be dead.
Fancy seeing the latest James Bond movie at your local AMC Theater (for Americans) or Odeon (for us Brits) when it’s eventually released and cinemas are open once more?
Well, you can’t.
It seems that the CEO of AMC Theaters, Adam Aron, has had a massive temper tantrum over Universal Pictures release of the animated movie, Trolls 2: World Tour on video on demand platforms during the cinema release, with Universal Pictures planning similar launches for future films. Universal wants it to be complementary to a theatrical release, but cinemas such as AMC/Odeon (as well as Cineworld in the UK and Regal Cinemas in the US) are up in arms.
COMING SOON TO A CINEMA (OR NOT) NEAR YOU: Studios vs. Cinemas, an epic battle to monetise your eyeballs
With cinemas already affected by video on demand/streaming platforms, they need all the revenue they can muster, and generally there has been a window of opportunity for new films to be released only in theatres first before it ever hits VoD. But Covid-19 has changed all that. And cinemas are not at all sympathetic to their studio “partners” in this situation.
For me, I’ve always tried to watch new films at the cinema. Nothing beats a really big screen with superior audio. But over the past few years, the experience has not been as good as it could been – with even big chains like the Odeon not really doing much to improve upon it.
The local cinema (Ambassadors) was cheap and cheerful, but the seats were very uncomfortable and everything started to look shabby. So I made the effort to take the train to Guildford and watch films at the local Odeon. But in a move that will undoubtedly help them in the long term (assuming they don’t block film studio releases), Ambassadors started doing major renovation work on the cinema before the Covid-19 pandemic came to be, with plans to open in summer 2020. Meanwhile, Odeon in Guildford was planning to take over the buildings directly next to it, but then withdrew.
Could we be saying goodbye?
With regards to cinema releases being available to rent via the likes of iTunes or Amazon Prime Video at £15.99 for 48 hours access – it’s not something I’ll be doing, but like most things, it’s always good to have a choice. The kind of choices that the movie exhibitors would rather the consumer not have. It’s understandable, of course, but it’s very much a case that one has to adapt or die – something many businesses in this pandemic have had to do.
Cinemas will need to do much more than sell coffee to retain customers
However, the current window of VoD opportunity is a confusing one. I recently spent £13.99 on the last of the Star Wars Skywalker films on Apple TV, thinking that it’d be some time before it hits Disney+. I was wrong – in less than three weeks since its release on iTunes, Disney+ is going to stream it as part of everybody’s Disney+ subscription. I’m okay with that – in fact, it’s good because hopefully Disney+ will offer the thing in UltraHD whereas the iTunes version is only HD.
Now I have absolutely no idea what DIsney plans to do with the release of Pixar’s Onward. I’ve always enjoyed a good Pixar movie – they’re the US equivalent of Japan’s Studio Ghibli to me – but at the moment we have no idea when the Apple TV release is going ahead, and with that, the Disney+ UK release. And why doesn’t Mr. Aron take exception to Disney and block their films? Because they own 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm, Marvel, and Pixar as well as their own films. That really would be business suicide.
I think studios are just as unsure of release schedules during this time of pandemic as the cinemas. Nobody knows when the lockdowns will ease. Will there be a resurgence of the virus? Secondary infections? How long before a vaccine is developed and rolled out?
The big problem here is that the studios have spent many tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars making these films, only to find there is no avenue in which to release them theatrically SAFELY and start making their money back. Without that return and profit on investment, new films can’t be made. Yes, they want to release them in cinemas, but while people can’t get out to them, the only way forward is video on demand.
And that’s why I think AMC/Odeon/Cineworld/Regal are being bloody fools in this argument. If you remove the ability for somebody to watch a movie at their local (or regional) cinema all because you’re so pissed off with them for releasing something during a time when nobody can go anywhere at all, people are simply going to see that film elsewhere. It may be another cinema or video on demand.
Odeon – a mixed bag experience – ticket office closed & ticket machine woes
What really makes me mad about Mr. Aron’s decision is that AMC Theaters put on a really good film premiere back in 2005 when I went to New York to attend the world premiere of Peter Jackson’s King Kong. The place was buzzing, and everybody had such a great time (and talk about celebrity spotting – it’s not often you get to watch a film in the same theatre as George Lucas who was there with his son). It was a brilliant presentation from AMC and Universal, and it saddens me that Mr. Aron is willing to destroy that relationship because Universal needed to release the film.
Is it the end of the cinema? I don’t think so. But I think there has to be many changes made to the business model. Not only does the price point need to be such that entire families can afford to go more regularly (the various subscription passes go some way to resolve that issue, but perhaps not enough), but content options need to be wide open – not reduced further. More live events on a big screen. More TV shows (yes, really) – why couldn’t I pay something like £40 to watch an entire season of Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul at the highest quality over a period of a few weeks?
In any event, I hope this issue is resolved, otherwise I’m pretty sure we might be saying goodbye to AMC and Odeon as people leave it for other chains or home video.
As we enter yet another week of lockdown, I’ve been all too successful at remaining indoors. While Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda, Ocado, Waitrose and all other grocery stores online delivery services are completely out of bounds, Amazon Prime Now has proven itself worthy over and over again. Best £7.99/month I’ve ever spent.
I’ve managed to keep up stocks of the regular staples including bread and main meals regularly over the past few weeks without too many issues. One has to keep checking available slots, but usually something turns up every few hours. This is in stock contrast to Sainsbury’s which is only delivering to the most vulnerable. Click and Collect is always unavailable.
The big problem with the main supermarkets is that they make the assumption that everybody drives and has a car. I don’t. The bus service where I live has reduced its services to about one bus per hour rather than the usual 10 minutes when they were operating normally. So it could take several hours for me to go grocery shopping each week – and bear in mind that I’d have to cart everything back by myself.
Virtual Music Concerts
I’ve not been to many music concerts in my life (I can count on one hand – The Divine Comedy at The University of East Anglia (UEA) back in the late 90’s, Last Night of the Proms at Hyde Park in the mid 2000’s, and similarly one trip to Guilfest in 2006), but as we’re all still in lockdown, new ways are being found to provide the concert-going experience at home.
Fortnite, the wildly popular video game, recently put on a virtual concert for Travis Scott. The event, called Astronomical, showcased a few of his existing songs as well as previewing a new track. It was rather spectacular – and more importantly, provided a virtual mosh pit where you could jump and run around and, in some cases, swim and fly. The Xbox controller’s haptic feedback engine vibrate in time to the music often.
I’ve put together a few highlights here.
It was a wildly successful event, and I have no doubt that we’ll be seeing more of these things in the future – lockdown or not.
Replacing the daily commute with a webcam
One of the most difficult things I had trouble sourcing when work asked us to start working from home was a webcam. Every other bugger was buying them as well. But I’ve finally managed to get my hands on one, albeit it at a cost which closely matches that of my monthly commute via South Western Railways. It is a 4K webcam, though, and designed for streaming.
Work has a regular weekly meeting with all employees, and a daily virtual coffee/chinwag in which using video is highly encouraged. My 16″ MacBook Pro is hooked up to my new 27″ BenQ monitor, and the lid is closed, so I can’t use the webcam there (and besides which it’s only 720p because Apple has seriously skimped on what is now a vital resource). I’ve used the 2018 iPad Pro temporarily, but the angle is such that it looks up my nose and just isn’t flattering at all. With the new Logitech Brio 4K Stream camera, it’ll sit on top of the monitor and will provide viewers with a much better angle, and at a much better quality.
I imagine that realistically, we won’t be back in the office much until June/July time, so it seems worthwhile making the investment now. Given the potential for reinfection, we may be using video conferencing a lot more.
Photo slideshows and video editing
I’ve started experimenting with Apple Photos’ slideshow functions to put together a few slideshows of various things. One thing that I put together was a tribute to the family cat, Lupin, who sadly passed away last month. It’s quite interesting that looking back on the photos, I took a LOT of pictures of that cat. But alas, it’s not great, so I won’t embed it here.
RIP Lupin Drake
After messing about with Apple Photos, I attempted to put together a slideshow of a trip I made to the Pacific Northwest I went on 5 years ago next month. I wanted to do something a bit special for the 5th anniversary. Alas, Apple Photos is a massive pain in the arse and, combined with my lack of organisational skills in managing the photos and date/time settings on the camera and iPhone, it’s all a bit of a mess. Re-ordering them in the slideshow caused significantly more problems.
I had even imported the exported slideshow into Final Cut Pro X, created some text overlays (with a flag for each country I visited) and polished the presentation. It looked good, apart from noticing the completely out of order photos which kept happening every time I messed about with the export function in Apple Photos. So I’d preview it in Apple Photos, see that it was okay, and got a completely different result from the export after putting all the effort in captioning and graphics and watching the results.
I think what I need to do is create an album, add the photos I want to add there, and then create the slideshow for that. I’ll give that a go soon, but having spent nearly 7 hours very early Saturday morning messing about with Apple Photos and Final Cut Pro X, I’m not in a rush to do so again too soon.
