Ok…time to vent. So we all remember during this years Macworld how excited I was to hear about iTunes Movie rentals from Steve’s keynote. Well today I decided what the hell I’ll try it out. The weather was bad so I didn’t want to drive to the video store, and this movie Sunshine looked kinda interesting. I rented it and it starts to download (which would take 60 mins to finish), but I knew that you could watch it while it downloads. I let it go a little bit and then I click on it to start playing it. The player pops up, but the movie doesn’t start. I go to close the player, and just as I suspected it’s frozen and iTunes is not responding. I tried a couple more times only to have the same results. Fed up, I called Apple’s tech support which apparently you have to own a Apple product for them to help you. So I had to give them my iPod serial number and all of that shit. She puts me on hold for 5 mins only to come back saying, “I don’t know” email Apple. I’m like great it will will take 24 to 48 hours to hear from them my damn movie will expire by then. In Apple’s defense they did get back to me in a couple of hours, but they weren’t much help. Basically what it came down to was that I have Windows XP 64bit and iTunes doesn’t support that. So I emailed back asking for my money, I’ll just go to the store and rent it.
So, all hope isn’t completely lost for iTunes movie rentals. I am willing to give it another go once I get my MacBook Pro.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
I had the same problem when I bought the iPod Touch and was unaware that it did not work with XP 64bit, even though I had used my iPod Nano (1st gen) for awhile on it. I ended up returning the Touch but now that I made the switch to an iMac I plan to purchase another.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Yeah, iTunes like half works. For somethings there is no issue but for others it just doesn’t like xp 64bit.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
I’m having the same problem, but using normal XP Pro (32-bit). I waited for the full download, hit play, and iTunes froze. Upgraded iTunes + Quicktime to the latest, no help. Rebooted twice. Same problem. Freezes when I click play on video. Music works, just not my video rental. 23 hours remaining.
July 12th, 2008 at 2:22 am
also have win xp 32-bit, latest version of itunes, movie purchases work fine, rentals freeze instantaneously.
apple doesn’t seem to be willing to fix the problem as it has persisted for months (tried to rent several months ago, soon after the service launched, with the same results). i think it’s something in their drm. i also think they don’t want to tell us what it is because all they tell me in the emails they send me about it is, “we’re sorry, please try again later.” no clue as to what may be causing it whatsoever.
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Hi, I had this problem when I rented 2 movies. I had apple let me re-download the 2 movies after my rental period finished so that I could trouble shoot the problem more.
Apple care pointed me to this uRl: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1421?viewlocale=en_US
So I created a new xp username and re-downloaded one of the movies in that iTunes. WOrks no problem!!
SO in the original xp username that’s broken I completey removed these 2 folders: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes and
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes and now the original login works too!!