Feb 19: Two tricks for iTunes movie rentals [UPDATE]
Note: This is an article that I translated from my german blog for international usage! Hope you'll understand it...
Apples introduction of the new movie rental service at Macworld was pretty much welcomed by the users. Anyway, there are two aspects that most customers did not appreciate very much. The first aspect is the fact that rented movies may be moved from the computer which downloaded it to any iPod, iPhone or Apple TV, but not to other computers. The other aspect is that movies stay only 24 more hours in your iTunes library or on your mobile device once you've started watching it. Anyway, I found out two little tricks to solve these problems so that you can watch a rented movie on another computer (of course not at the same time) and extend the 24 hour limit of a started movie.
How to extend the 24h limit of watching a movie
The first problem is related to the 24h limit for rented movies that have already been started. This timeframe is way to short for a lot of users. Therefore it's good to know that it is quite easy to extend. You just have to make a copy of the rented movie anywhere on your harddisk and then import this copy into your iTunes library so that the same movie appears in your library twice.
Now when you start to watch one copy of the movie the 24h countdown will begin but the availability of the other copy will remain untouched for the rest of the 30 days.
Of course this can be done unlimited times within the 30 days rent period. The only disadvantage is that the copy uses another 1-2GB of your harddisk. But I guess that this should not be a huge problem.
How to move a rented movie to a different computer
The other problem targets the fact that a rented movie may be available and watchable only on one device at the same time. However, as Steve Jobs promised during his Macworld keynote, rented movies may be moved to any other device to be watched there. But this is not the whole truth. It is indeed right that you can move a rented movie to any current iPod, Apple TV or the iPhone. But apart from that it is not possible to move a rented movie to another computer to watch it there. By trying this you will receive a message saying "Could not play the rented movie because it is authorized to play on another computer or device" just like Terry White wrote in his tech blog. This means that you can watch the rented movie only on an iPod or the iPhone, Apple TV and on the computer that downloaded it. Anyway, there is a small trick that can help you out of this. Since you can move the rented movie to an iPod or the iPhone, you can use these devices for transport. Just move the rented movie to the portable device, plug it out of the original computer and into the other one. You can then move the movie into the new computers iTunes library. This even works without syncing the whole library with the iPod. Note: You should always rent the movie with your main iTunes library computer since moving the movie to the iPod requires a syncing of the whole library! Moving it from the iPod to the other computer works without syncing.
Note: For English version please click here.Die Einführung des Online-Filmverleihs auf der diesjährigen MacWorld ist im Allgemeinen auf breite Zustimmung gestoßen. Zwei Aspekte sorgten jedoch schon relativ schnell für kleineren Unmut. Zum einen handelt
Aufgenommen: Feb 19, 11:59