Ask most people why they still buy a movie or a show outright in the age of the all-you-can-eat subscription, and you'll get a shrug and a tossed-off comment about wanting an old favorite on hand without having to hunt down which service currently carries it. That argument got even stronger this month, when Apple began upgrading purchased TV shows to 4K for free. That's roughly 50 titles so far, including all seven seasons of Mad Men and the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, bumped up at no extra cost for anyone who already owned them in HD.
It's a small change on the surface, but it actually gives digital buyers the one thing subscriptions and rentals can't: a library that gets better even after you've paid for it.
The upgrade that arrived without an announcement
Movies got this in 2017, but TV shows only just caught up
Apple didn't put out a press release. The change was spotted by Apple TV researcher Sigmund Judge and picked up by news outlets, and it works the same way as the movie version has worked for years: if you bought an eligible title, the 4K copy simply appears in your library, whether you purchased it last week or the better part of a decade ago. Movies have had this since 2017, when the first Apple TV 4K launched and Apple started upgrading purchased films to 4K and HDR for nothing, later adding Dolby Atmos, HDR10+, and even 3D 4K along the way.
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