iTunes movie purchases will not play on external display - HDCP auth error

I had the exact same issue trying to play movies rented from itunes from my macbook pro to my 55 inch Panasonic HDTV and theatre sound system. An onscreen message warned me that the TV did not support HDCP. Playing with the display, HD vs SD and mirroring settings made no difference. Attempting to navigate to the movie using the finder and then viewing the movie using open with > quicktime, or VLC or any one of numerous video apps I tried did not work either. (Others in this forum suggested this strategy, but even if this DOES work today, I'll bet apple (under pressure from content providers) will make sure it won't work forever.

I eventually solved the issue by switching from using a mini display > VGA adapter (and VGA cable connected to the TV) to using a mini display > HDMI adapter and an HDMI cable to connect to the TV. It happened to be a 3rd party adapter, but I doubt that matters. I think the reason why the mac preferred the HDMI cable is because if you use HDMI there is no way to set up the TV to pass through the signal to any kind of recording device. If my initial attempt using a VGA cable had worked, theoretically I could have then used the HDMI OUT on the TV to record the movie to an external device. Once I connected using HDMI and a separate optical audio cable to my sound system, rented movies play fine within itunes and I got to enjoy them in awesome HD on my huge TV.

There's another dimension to this which I find infuriating. I buy a lot of documentaries on iTunes. Occasionally, there is one (or a portion of one) that I would like to show to one of my classes that I am teaching. When I try to hook my MacAir up to the classroom projector and show it, I get the HDCP message. So much, I guess, for Apple being friendly to education. Bummer...

hinam - Although frustration is felt one has to ask if the material being shown is protected under the "terms and conditions" i.e. non commercial release, or is it a paid academic license to enable public viewing of copyrighted material for education purposes?

One can understand if a monitor cannot be verified by an apple product to comply to HD standards - but the problem lies with apple advocates in situations such as myself - as a "former" 2011 G5 tower with Apple 27" cinema display owner receiving HDCP error when both are apple products capable of displaying HD yet wont. Although some have mentioned upgrading OSX 10.8 helps, don't believe this is to be a solution considering OSX 10.6 is more than capable and is fully compatible with all my other purchased programs. My solution - sold my apple gear and now run a custom built PC - twice as fast - blu-ray compatible and capable of displaying 6 monitors - incredibly 0 problems with HDCP! No switching back to apple now or ever!

eric.d.viking wrote:

as a "former" 2011 G5 tower with Apple 27" cinema display owner

???

Apple G5 tower was discontinued in 2006

Thank-you Chris CA for pointing that out and reminding me a MacPro is not a G5 - have upgraded enough apple products to make even a hardcore environmentalist mad lol. The last being my trusty old Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 to a refurbed Dual 2.4Ghz MacPro in 2011, for reasons to obvious to mention. Yes have owned a few mac products in my time including laptops, appleTV, iPhone and stress my decision to move was not with the products or their quality which cannot be flawed, but rather the lack of (in my opinion) support and Apple's decision to control/limit capabilties of their products. In case a MacPro Tower can clearly support blu-ray players from hardware level (as even I had loaded one to the Dual 2.4) yet Apple chooses to not support it - so you buy a HD version to support jobs and industries from iTunes and bang - HDCP error - Why?? These are both apple products and both capable of display HD content. One would imagine a flagship product like the Apple tower was/is? designed to be upgradable/expandable yet is it really? Unfortunately when comparing support, longevity upgradability and the magic word - price - PC won me. But as a musician reading comments leading to illegal use or illegal downloads potentially robbing both artists and companies that provide thousands of jobs just makes my skin crawl. Imagine a life without music or movies if they truly decided to strike at the inability to earn an income!? Yes a little of a rant but even now it's amazing to see Apple Corp. still hasen't resolved the problem - End users who pay for products that claim to work seamlessly should never be lumped with the task of finding solutions or workarounds - unless paid 😁

Use a mini display > HDMI adapter instead and the problem goes away.

I have a similar problem. I just downloaded my first video content from I-Tunes. Of course, stupidly bought the entire season of a show. I'm using a MacBook Pro, running Snow Leopard. I am running a Panasonic 1080p projector via a vga cable toggled to the mini display port. I will try using an HDMI adapter to see if it works. But Apple should warn people before the purchase is made.

You are absolutely right they should warn us before taking our money. We are doing the right thing by purchasing instead of downloading from a p2p. The HDMI fix is new and not supplied by Apple, who monitor his board (try swearing at them and see how quickly they respond to you in private!) I was offered a refund after a quick rant ( with swearing ). Why Apple haven't changed their purchase path and included warnings and appropriate setup instructions (such as the HDMI cable 'fix') Is open to conjecture.

Best of luck.

Erik, you've hit the nail on the head. When you purchase a product of service, the seller is bound to supply something that works. Should it not, you are entitled to a refund. I would encourage everyone who has encountered this issue to request a rerun. Money talks, and a decline I. Revenue will affect a change in both service and policy.

**** autocorrect. REFUND not RERUN. Apologies.

I was told I would receive a refund for my two purchases and received one. I guess I'll take what I can get. Moral of the story is that a purchase through Amazon enables streaming on far more devices (Xbox, Roku, Laptop-to-TV) and better service.

We just wanted to sit down for a nice evening. But now we spent over an hour trying to get the movie to play on Apple TV. Can't access server. Entered password numerous times. Just want to watch a movie but can't. Can we get our money back on the Apple TV?

Ok, so I upgraded to iTunes 11.0.2 and my DRM issue (at least with an HDMI cable) has disappeared.
Just a few hours ago with iTunes 11.0.1 it would give me an error message (something like "you are not authorized to view this on an external display").

Now the message is gone and I can view this alright on my large HD display.

Still have to try it with a bunch of other display / cable options, but so far so good.

It seems like Apple has listened to its customers at least on some level. A very common sense thing really.
Still a bit grumpy, but at least all that money I spent on legal iTunes purchases has not been (seemingly) a total waste.

Thanks for the fix.

Zebbler

Zebbler,

I just upgrased to 11.0.2 also but still getting the HDCP error that i cannot play on my external screen. It is connected via HDMI to a HDMI switch and then up to the HD TV. How did you get it to work?

I have posted this several times but I will post again since it seems people are still having problems. I was initially trying to connect my macbook pro to a large HD TV using a mini display > VGA adapter and a VGA > VGA cable connected to the VGA port of the TV. I saw the dreaded HDCP meesage. I then switched to using a mini display > HDMI adapter and a standard HDMI > HDMI cable connected to the HDMI in port of the TV. The itunes content played fine after that. Hope this helps.