How to recover lost movie rentals?

Question

Level 1

8 points

How to recover lost movie rentals?

I rented several movies and had 3 more to view. It is only about 10 days and I had not started to view these 3 yet. They are rented thru iTunes on my iMac and synced to aTV.

Yesterday my aTV went nuts and started resync with my iMac. All contents appeared lost on the aTV and the loooong resync just ended and I realised I lost the 3 rental movies.

The 3 rental movies are not on my iMac because I had sync to aTV. But aTV went nuts, all contents lost and when it resync with iMac, the rental movies not there. They were on the aTV sometime yesterday before this resync happen.

How to recover these 3 rental movies? Do I rent them again and it will recognise that I had rented them before and not charge me again?

Pls help. Thks in advance.

iMac 24", aTV, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch, iPod Shuffle, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on May 3, 2009 8:01 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Chenks

Level 5

7,435 points

May 3, 2009 8:12 AM in response to cloverng

there are no recovery options.
you will need to contact itunes store support and explain to them your situation. they may let you download them again.

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Answer 2

cloverng Author

Level 1

8 points

May 3, 2009 8:29 AM in response to Chenks

Thks for the confirmation.

Is it normal for aTV to go into resyncing? Did I do anything wrong? I always set the aTV to standby after use. I felt the aTV was hot even on standby mode and thus had started switched it off every night before I go to bed.

Or is there some bugs in the Apple software causing this or is it faulty aTV?

This resync is a big headache. Not only losing my movie rentals but the time it takes to resync is so long as I have movies from my video camera. I just got my aTV for less than 1 month and started to enjoy it only to have this happened. This is so frustrating.

Thks again.

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Answer 3

Chenks

Level 5

7,435 points

May 3, 2009 8:37 AM in response to cloverng

cloverng wrote:
Is it normal for aTV to go into resyncing? Did I do anything wrong? I always set the aTV to standby after use. I felt the aTV was hot even on standby mode and thus had started switched it off every night before I go to bed.

switching it off every night isn't going to do it any good. you may end up reducing the life of the HDD.

Or is there some bugs in the Apple software causing this or is it faulty aTV?

This resync is a big headache. Not only losing my movie rentals but the time it takes to resync is so long as I have movies from my video camera. I just got my aTV for less than 1 month and started to enjoy it only to have this happened. This is so frustrating.

syncing will depend entirely on what sync options you have set in itunes. i don't believe a rented movie in itunes would automaticall sync to the appletv. it usually needs the user to tell it to sync.

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Answer 4

cloverng Author

Level 1

8 points

May 3, 2009 8:49 AM in response to Chenks

Ok, I will not switch off the aTV every night altho it is hot even on standby.

You got me wrong. The sequence of events is
1. Rent movies on iMac
2. Sync to aTV so no longer exist on iMac
3. After a few days, I saw that the aTV appears on my iMac has everything wiped out and it does a resync starting to copy 1 out of 1399 items. The rented movies does not show on aTV anymore.
4. Resyncing just ended and the rental movies are not on aTV.

How can the aTV automatically delete the rental movies when I have not press play yet????

Headache and frustration now.

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Answer 5

Alley_Cat

Level 7

20,548 points

May 3, 2009 8:54 AM in response to cloverng

You need to complain to itunes store and probably to AppleTv feedback - a few people are having issues with everything deleting - heaven knows why.

As rentals 'phone home' for authorisation or something when you start them (to start the view period of 24 or 48 hours) I would imagine they should have some kind of log at Apple to say if you actually started watching or not.

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Answer 6

cloverng Author

Level 1

8 points

May 3, 2009 9:00 AM in response to Alley_Cat

Thks.

Will call iTunes customer support.

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Answer 7

lkrupp

Level 6

14,320 points

May 3, 2009 10:46 AM in response to cloverng

Ok, I will not switch off the aTV every night altho it is hot even on standby.

The entire AppleTV case serves as the device's heat sink. It is quite normal for the case to be very warm. I can assure you that the internals guts are much cooler than the case is.

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Answer 8

Waymen

Level 5

5,722 points

May 5, 2009 8:58 PM in response to lkrupp

lkrupp wrote:
I can assure you that the internals guts are much cooler than the case is.

I'll agree that the Apple TV is designed to run "warm" and that people shouldn't be too concerned about that issue. However, it would be a little difficult for the internals to be "much cooler" than the case since heat will move from the warmer to the cooler material. Thus, if case were warmer the heat would be flowing _back_ into the internals. 😉

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Answer 9

cloverng Author

Level 1

8 points

May 5, 2009 11:27 PM in response to Waymen

Thks to all who had responded. Will just like to update all on my findings.

1. Lost movie rentals
I wrote to iTunes customer support and fill up the Apple form explanining what had happened. Customer support responded within an hour and provided instructions to re-download the missing movies. Very happy with Apple's service.

2. Apple TV losing its contents and Hot Apple TV
I also called Apple care regarding why Apple TV wiped out everything. This I was told to monitor if it happens again, I can bring it in for a check.
I also asked about the hot Apple TV. I was told that it is expected and the case is the heat sink. Advise is to keep aTV on standby if not in use and not power off which is what I had started to practice.

I will monitor and hope no recurrence of aTV losing its contents.

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