Filed under: iTunes
iTunes rentals and the system date
We got an interesting tip from "Jack", who noted that you could affect the time remaining on an iTunes movie rental by altering your system time. I gave it a shot to be sure. It's true, if you're willing to offset the date on your computer until you finally have time to watch that movie, you can get past the 30-day time limit.
It was also noted that if you fast-forward your calendar to the due date of a rental, iTunes will remove the movie from the library but apparently not from your drive. That seems odd to me, but that's the way it works, at least if you switch the date up yourself. And sure, you could get a little creative with a DVR and some streaming output, but the price isn't so bad to me that it warrants the extra effort. My movie-watching habits seem to be in line with Apple's plan: I generally watch a movie once no matter how good it is. Ultimately, it's just a matter of finding the time to do it.
Thanks, Jack!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Ryan said 11:12AM on 1-16-2008
T-Minus 3 hours until iTunes 7.6.1
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Mystic said 11:16AM on 1-16-2008
Same here. I don't buy movies, however, many time I do take more than 24hrs to finish a movie.
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Bender Bending Rodriguez said 11:20AM on 1-16-2008
I'm surprised they didn't account for that. IT surely is the first thing people will do to circumvent the time.
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Rafe H. said 11:21AM on 1-16-2008
Yes, but can you change the system date to get past the 24 hour limit?
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James Elliott said 1:19PM on 1-17-2008
Heh, as ryan says, there will be a fix for this.
On an aside (randomly hoping someone can help with this), i tried to access the itunes rentals by changing my store location in itunes. When i do it (this is repeatable by the way) it stops loading the US itunes store halfway through, and then my internet stops working. Firefox tries to load pages for about a minute before doing the standard "page cannot be displayed" error. This also affects mail, safari etc. After a reboot, everything works fine.
As i say, this is repeatable. I'm in the UK and usualy use the UK store if that helps.
And sorry for commentjacking, just thought people may know what is happening (i have googled the problem, and nothing).
Cheers
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mbaudis said 3:48PM on 1-17-2008
well, do you have 2 itunes accounts?
i did it in the past, and currently have 2 accounts. one is US, the other Germany (actually rareky used, due to Euro and lack of movies ...).
you should log out of your account, before changing.
Marco said 11:25AM on 1-16-2008
Heh, interesting.
I'd be interested to know if renting can somehow be protected. Especially with the AppleTV I wouldn't want my kids to order whatever they see in the menu.
I assume this is AppleTV only and I'm not sure if you guys can check it already, but is there some sort of maturity rating in the device? And is it possible to block ordering of rentals with a pincode of some sorts?
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Adam said 11:36AM on 1-16-2008
Yes, there are parental controls in the AppleTV.
krye said 11:28AM on 1-16-2008
yeh, that's a bug that will be squashed real fast!
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Thomas said 1:44PM on 1-16-2008
Personally I don't think any of these solutions will really work until there is some real synergy between on demand via the internet and broadcast TV. It's all well and good being able to rent/buy your content as you decide you want it but there's something to be said for scheduled content, both in terms of discovering new stuff but also in just watching something again because it's on and it catches your eye. I must have seen the first two Bourne films a dozen times because I've noticed them on late night and ended up watching them, otherwise I wouldn't have even thought to watch them again even though I enjoyed them and have the DVDs.
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Andy said 11:48AM on 1-16-2008
Up in the great white north of Canada, apparently we are not able to rent movies yet which I don't get. They always seem to delay everything so much in Canada (which I guess is caused by licensing problems or something), but I found a glitch that almost allows me to watch movies on itunes up here.
If you go to the store, and then click on iTunes U, in the menu on the left side 'movies - new' pops up as well as iTunes Latino. Unfortunately, when you then click on this link it takes you to a catagorized view of all I can buy on iTunes instead of to the movie rental site.
Do you know when these rentals are set to be released in Canada?
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Cello said 12:15PM on 1-16-2008
You're lucky, over here in Europe we are still waiting for TV shows....
NovaScotian said 6:04PM on 1-16-2008
When the CRTC figures out how to screw some extra money out of us.
Simon Arch said 12:23PM on 1-16-2008
It's not surprising at all. Getting permission to offer a show in a particular market can be difficult, if not outright impossible. My wife was working on an anime project with a Japanese company and an American company. They wanted to be able to show the resulting anime in several markets. The only problem is the anime's "intellectual" property was split among several companies (it was an old, well established series), some of whom did not want to be bothered with a new series.
It's an ugly, ugly thing, and most consumers are unaware of how byzantine the whole thing can be. Eventually Canada and the other countries will get rentals. It's going to take some time, but Apple needs to be able to show the copyright holders that it's worth doing. So America will be the test market.
Personally I'm disappointed in Apple for not offering a NetFlix style all-you-can-eat system. Pay say, $15 a month and you can have three movies "out" at any one time, and can watch them as often as you want. Cancel your account, and the movies become inaccessible. It seems a trifle cynical of Apple to charge Blockbuster prices for their rentals. It's like they decided to see just how much money they could extract from their customers before the customers stood up and said, "No."
Andy said 12:38PM on 1-16-2008
Netflix definitely seems to have the upper hand when it comes to consumer value. I just like the convenience of 'movies-on-demand.' Canada seems to have one of the worst corporations running all of our communications industry up here too, Rogers. who somehow is charging around $2-3 more for an HD movie, even though you only get it for a day. It just seems so obscene to charge more fees for a service that they provide with their product. Flat fees are necessary now-a-days in that respect. Or slight charges; it can only get worse.
It's unfortunate Europe doesn't have TV shows yet, I feel that is one of iTunes new strong points here, especially at $2 an episode. It makes piracy not worth it anymore, even though Canada is very lenient on their copyright laws and the risk of conviction is low.
To tangent to the left, all I want to see in the next few years, is public internet/ a wifi North America. That would be amazing, even if the microwaves are killing us.
KiwiBri said 11:48AM on 1-16-2008
..and who tests these Apple Products? lol!
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peter.drier said 12:09PM on 1-16-2008
It would be nice if the rental fee could be applied towards purchase of the same movie.. I.e. If you love the rental so much, you can purchase the movie for an extra 6$.. You've already downloaded it, so that 6$ would be relatively cost free for apple to deliver.
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Greg G said 3:57PM on 1-16-2008
Output to dvr... are you trying to give me ideas? ;)
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Jon said 12:01PM on 1-16-2008
wow timing attack? didn't do their homework!
I'm interested where the key comes from for these movies. In playfair, there is a custom user key that decrypts a master key that encrypts the mpeg data.
I'm curious how this rental encryption works, I wonder if itunes just "forgets" the keys (Which would mean you save them and watch as many times as you want) or if they have to retrieve a key off the server every time you want to play...
I'm hoping DVD Jon takes a look at this soon.
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spitfire said 12:11PM on 1-16-2008
how about setting your system time forward into the future..? does it allow you to download as-yet-unreleased movies? hahaha... ahem... sorry.
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