On 6 October 2009 Apple changed their links to disable access to their trailers through any program other than Quicktime. They did the same thing over the summer when they debuted the Avatar trailer and like then, downloading through your browser or any download manager results in an index.html file instead of the desired trailer. Or if you just click the direct links to play the trailer in your browser you are redirected to the Apple Trailers home page.

There are some workarounds to this problem that allow you to download the trailers. Some are easier than others, but in all cases it requires you to fool the Apple servers into thinking you are downloading the trailers through Quicktime. To do this, you need to change your 'user-agent' in whatever program you wish to use to download the trailers.

Below are a few brief guides on how to do this...

Firefox - Install the User Agent Switcher add-on by chrisperderick. Then, from the Tools menu you want to select Tools>>Default User Agent>>Quicktime and the download links should work when you try and watch or download them via Firefox. If there is no 'Quicktime' option by default then you will need to create one by choosing Tools>Default User Agent>Edit User Agents... then New>New User Agent - from here clear all fields then enter Quicktime under Description and QuickTime/7.6.2 under User Agent. Click OK to save the newly created User Agent setting.

Flashget - This download manager developed by Amazesoft is free and lets you change the 'user-agent' along with all the usual benefits of download managers (queuing multiple downloads, pausing, multiple connections etc). I prefer the 'Classic Version' v1.73 which you can download here (or use this direct link). Once installed you simply want Tools>Options>Protocol then set User-Agent to 'User-Define' and enter QuickTime/7.6.2 in the box below. Click OK to save your settings and all Apple trailers downloaded through Flashget will now work.

WGet - For you command-line users out there then this small utility might be preferable. You can grab the Win32 version here. An example of how to use it would be...

wget -U "QuickTime/7.6.2" http://movies.apple.com/movies/summit/astroboy/astroboy-clip1_h480p.mov

Apple OS - For Apple users the Firefox User-Agent Switcher add-on method will work. There is also a built-in command-line feature that you can use...

curl -A "QuickTime/7.6.2" -O http://movies.apple.com/movies/summit/astroboy/astroboy-clip1_h480p.mov

Credit for the Mac command-line method goes to HD-Trailers.net with additional thanks to a reader who emailed to confirm it works (and correct it a little, adding the "-O" switch which makes the files save properly).