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With Retina iPad, 1080p Apple TV, Apple Should Offer an Upgrade to HD Option for Prior Video Purchases

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Apple has done a lot with its iTunes in the cloud, offering customers a convenient way to negate physical storage and archiving of prior music, TV shows, books, apps, and movies purchases by allowing them to re-download previously purchased digital content to any device of their choosing. Apple has gone a long way with its cloud integration and relaxing, somewhat, the DRM arms of its content partners and making iTunes easier and more user friendly. Like with music purchases, Apple had also implemented a ‘Complete My Season’ option to help customers purchase more videos. However, with recent hardware advancements on Apple’s hardware–including the 1080p streaming capabilities on Apple TV and the Retina Display on the latest iPad–Apple could do more to help its videophile customers.

One thing that’s still jarringly missing from iTunes is the ability for customers to upgrade their previously purchased SD content into HD. For example, with TV shows Apple could offer customers that option, and charge them the difference between an SD episode and an HD episode–which is $1 as TV shows cost $1.99 in HD and $2.99 in HD–and make for happy customers who may had not purchased the HD version in the beginning but now want to enjoy those videos with Apple’s new hardware. For movies, Apple could charge the difference between the going rate for an SD and an HD movie and allow customers an upgrade path to bring their iTunes TV shows and movies up to date with the new iPad and latest Apple TV refreshes.

With records of what’s being bought already stored in iTunes on the cloud, a move to migrate SD content to higher resolution 720p or 1080p HD resolution should not be difficult. And such a move wouldn’t be extensive as what Apple had done with iTunes Match for music either and would likely be a gesture of goodwill towards users who have committed and remained faithful to the ecosystem.

1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. RobTinVA

    04/17/2012 at 9:33 am

    Agree 100%! I have to believe this is something they’re going to do, since it will generate more revenue and make people happy at the same time.

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