Movie Rentals - Limit too short.

Yes, but it's the exact same limit that OnDemand provides, which is really what they are marketing against.

The content will start to increase...don't worry.

And if you know you're not going to watch a movie for 72 hours, don't rent it. Remember, it's not like netflix etc. You don't have to go out and get it or wait for the mail or whatever...click and watch. For me even HD movies start in seconds.

Hello tmilowski. Actually, Apple allows a bit of a grace period on that 24 hours (shhh! don't tell the movie studios!). How much of a fudge factor, I don't fully know, because you won't find anything advertised about it.

First off, I'm sure you are aware that you have 30 days to watch a downloaded movie that hasn't been started. Secondly, the general rule is that you have 24 hours to finish viewing a movie you started, BUT I have found out you can exceed that 24 hours.

For example, let's say I watched half a movie and AppleTV tells me it is ready to expire in 2 minutes. If I start that movie up again before it expires, AppleTV/iTunes lets me watch the rest of the movie well past the expiration time.

I'm not sure how far you can bend that grace period, but I have viewed several rentals beyond their expiration times.

I can also report an oddity about the 24 hour time limit and perhaps this is what was being described as a grace period. We rented an HD movie and set to watching it. Unfortunately because of some hiccup or neighborhood broadband drain or just bad streaming, the movie never ended downloading by the time we were ready to be done watching. We had essentially "caught" the download stream with about 10 minutes of movie left to go.

We waited for a short while and gave up waiting. The family went to bed. When I awoke the next morning I went to check the status of the rental. It had accomplished its download sometime in the night. At that time the rental reported it had 11 hours of life left. I put the ATV to standby and we lived the day. Later in the afternoon I gathered up the family to finally watch the remaining 10 minutes of movie before watching another movie.

This time, astonishingly enough, the rental was reporting it had 18 hours of life left before expiration. We finished the movie and instead of deleting, I kept it. In the end the 24 hour rental actually turned into an approximate 36 hour rental.

My wife believed it was because Apple once again amazed her with their product and somehow knew we had downloading issues the night of the original rental. "Apple knew and they gave us more time," she told me. More the pessimist, I think it was more of a glitch in the Matrix. But I can't deny our 24 hour rental turned into a 36 hour one.

Decided to test the expiration.

Started the movie again with 8 minutes left. 20 minutes later, it's still playing. So I hit the "menu" button to get the message...

*This movie rental has already expired*

This movie will be deleted immediately if you stop watching it. Do you want to stop watching this movie?

_Continue Watching_
Stop Watching


Seems reasonable to me.

So knowing the time restrictions you opt to complain to us users about your "choice" to rent (knowing limits), then your "choice" to stop watching. Amazes me how because people find that their choices turned out not good for them, they want somebody else to change to fit their needs.

24 hrs to finish at most a 3 hour movie. Come on. That is plenty of time. If it isn't, it means you made a choice. Also the time limit is part of the deal making process with the movie studios in conjunction of cost. I am sure Apple would love to give more time to stand apart, but they also have to keep studios happy in order to keep getting content.