[X4U] Itunes TV shows to DVD?

[Stroller]

On 5 Nov 2007, at 00:36, Jesse Leo wrote:
>
> I apologize if this has been covered before, but is it possible to  
> somehow
> get my beloved collection of Battlestar Galactica episodes that I  
> purchased
> from itunes (m4v format) to DVDs? I'd love to be able to watch them  
> on TV,
> and have no desire to buy iTV or whatever it's called.

The DRM appears to render this task non-trivial:
http://askbobrankin.com/convert_itunes_videos_to_mpeg.html

You'll easily find some for-pay solutions using Google - I'm dubious  
but they seem typically to do a free demo. This is the only free beer  
tool I can find:
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/SUPER_1

Do you mind if I ask you how much you paid for these downloads? Looks  
to me like you can get series 1 & 2 of the "reimagining" of  
Battlestar Galactica for less than $100 on Amazon.com, or the the  
"Complete Epic Series" for less than $50 (includes fancy packaging,  
but check out December's $20 release, too).

The lengths required to fulfil such a simple request - to play on  
your DVD player movies you've bought by download - seem to me quite  
inconvenient. It looks like the 3rd-party software required to  
convert the format from m4v is all Windows-based - and it's probably  
"illegal" in the US, anyway - or Apple are happy to sell you new  
hardware. I guess it'd make sense to buy these shows from iTunes if  
you wanted them the day they came out, but now you're stuffed if you  
want to watch 'em on your telly - in the light of all this I don't  
know how anyone could condemn piracy.

With the benefit of hindsight it would seem far more reasonable to  
have downloaded these shows using BitTorrent the day after they were  
aired and bought the DVD upon release. Now you've bought & paid for  
TV shows with a limited use. You can still download them from  
BitTorrent - and this solves the problem of watching on your telly  
iTunes shows you've paid for - but that doesn't seem as nice as  
getting the DVD for your collection.

A great commentary article:
http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink- 
birth-of.html

Stroller