
Family Sharing, Comes to All Your Content in iOS 8
Family sharing is a new way to share your digital content with your families via cloud. It was updated in iOS 8 in this autumn. With this family sharing feature, you can share all your iTunes movies, music, audiobooks, iBooks to up to 6 people in the same local network. It's different from home sharing function in iTunes, because you share your content with no sharing account needed. Once you set up Family Sharing, family members get immediate access to each other's music, movies, TV shows, books, and apps. Download what you want with a tap anytime you like. It brings harmony to your family's digital life.
What Problem Users May Have With Family Sharing?
I have two Apple ID accounts. One that I use for making iTunes purchases (which I had way before @me.com or @icloud.com existed) and the new @icloud.com account that I use for everything iCloud related (Messages, backups, etc).
Now that Family Sharing exists, I want to bring my kids and my wife into the plan, but from what I've seen, I wouldn't be able to use my icloud.com address since all my purchases are on the other Apple ID. The problem is that either I would need to stop using my icloud.com ID or purchase everything again? - From Apple Discussion Forum
As we said above, we can share all our iTunes content or any other information on our idevices with Family Sharing, and no sharing account or Apple ID is needed. But the condition is that we should setup Family Sharing with the same credit card. And we do purchase with the same credit card too.
Share iTunes Purchase and Rental Movies/TV Shows with Family Sharing
Family Sharing function is a good news for iTunes movie lovers. It's more convenient than home sharing we used before. We can watch the shared movies/TV shows in our own iTunes library anywhere, no limits for the network at all.
Step 1Creat Family Sharin Group.
One adult of your families can be chosen as the orgnizer. He/She can invite up to five members to join the group. And all group members should agree to share their movies, music, iBooks, apps etc.
Step 2 Initiate the Family Sharing Group Purchase
All new iTunes, iBooks, and App Store purchases initiated by family members will be billed to the organizer's account. The organizer will receive an alert when your kids start a purchase. So it's a good way to monitor them.
Share iTunes Movies With The Seventh Person
Yes, home sharing can only share content to up to 5 accounts, and at least one computer. And the new Family Sharing can share iTunes content up to 6 people. What can you do if you want to share your iTunes movies with more people?
ViWizard DRM Media Converter comes up to help you resolve this issue. By adopting some new technologies, ViWizard for Mac can easily strip the DRM protection from any iTunes videos and change the DRMed M4V videos to unprotected MP4 format with loseless quality. Learn more about how to transfer iTunes movies with another Apple ID/iTunes account.
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- Guide on Removing DRM Protection from iTunes Movies on Mac
- How to Use Home Sharing to Share iTunes Media Files

Nick Orin is a review writer, software geek and Mac OS enthusiast. He spends all his free time in searching useful software and gadgets to share with others.