Lissy and I decided to try out the new iTunes movie rental last night — a service I first mentioned a few days ago. Since the AppleTV upgrade will not be out for a few weeks, we rented Superbad in iTunes and planned to move it to AppleTV to watch. According to the Apple website this should be easy:
“Once the movie is downloaded, you can watch it on your computer or transfer the rental to a supported iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV“
Since I had already upgraded my iTunes to version 7.6 the rental option was available. I click to rent the movie, agree to the new Terms of Service, and start the download. The download ended up taking about 50 minutes over my Comcast cable connection. However, as advertised, I could start watching the movie in iTunes within a few seconds of starting the download. Great so far…
Once the movie finishes downloading, I go to transfer it to the AppleTV so Lissy and I can watch the movie together. Since I didn’t see a way to do this right away, I pulled up the instructions on Apple.com.
“1. Connect the device and select it in iTunes.”
Done. Easy enough.
“2. Click the Movies tab (for iPod), or the Videos tab (iPhone or Apple TV)”
Pulled it up. Great.
“3. Select the movie, and then click Move.
You must be connected to the Internet to transfer a rented movie.)”
Uh oh. The movie isn’t there. All I see are the holiday movies I transfered to my laptop for my son to watch on our flight to Orlando.
So, I do what any self-respecting gadget geek would do…
- Make sure that both iTunes and AppleTV have Internet access.
- Restart iTunes.
- Restart AppleTV.
- Set the laptop as the primary sync device for AppleTV.
- Try to create a playlist to sync.
- Try to create a Smart Playlist to sync.
- Tweak iTunes settings.
- Tweak AppleTV settings.
- Repeat steps 1-8 with minor variations several times.
- Admit defeat and go to Apple support.
- Can’t find any help there, get frustrated, give my wife the laptop to watch the movie, and go to bed early.
- Write this blog post the next day.
Has this happened to anyone else? Or, even better, has anyone else actually made this work? If so, please share your magic.
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