Movies missing from the UK Store

[OneQuestionMan]

I have some information for UK iTunes customers but I’m not sure it is of any interest to anyone.

There are a lot of movies missing from the Irish. This is has been known for a while - Ireland and the UK are the same distribution region so if a film is on the UK iTunes then it should be in the Irish Store. We also have some Rental only titles that should be available to purchase. And we get the ocassional missing Extras.

It is always caused by errors in the upload process. The movies are sitting in servers but not accessible due to those errors.

We get the usual response from the big studios - pass the to iTunes, claims of licensing issues and when the relent they fix it. Assuming they respond at all.

The smaller distributors are usually more open to complaints and fix the issues quick.

With the big studios it is their older titles (pre-1970) that are missing.

Which leads to the reason for this post. A rep from one of those smaller distributors has contacted me to say that after they fixed the movie I reported they took a deeper look and found a three other problem movies. Including one that was also missing for the UK.

This rep has also told me that because of my initial email on how it happens al it in the Irish store that he had a look at some distributors and discovered that there are quite a lot of movies available on the US store that should be available on the UK - and taking a sample amount which he has confirmed that are cleared for release in UK he believed that there are hundreds of older movies lying idle on the servers due to those upload errors.

I’m currently taking 5 to 10 minutes each day to compare the Irish and UK stores and email distributors. I had some luck with with getting the errors fixed but with most studios not responding it is difficult. And those that do respond don’t just pick random emails to respond to.

Any one in the UK who wants studios to add those missing older movies will have to do the same.