Watching RENTED movie on flight (i.e. no wi-fi or 3G available)

I recently rented 4 movies to watch on my PC during a 9 hr flight (no wifi available on the plane). The first movie I downloaded played perfectly with no problems. Movies 2-3, even though downloaded in the same manner as the first, would not play. I got a message stating that there is no connection to the I-tunes store. I found the actual mp-4 files on the computer using my explorer and tried opening the files with QuickTime (thinking that maybe the issue has to do with I tunes). The movie would load in quicktime. I knew this because all of the movie chapters showed up on the chapter list. The problem is that none of the audio or video played correctly. Basically a gray screen. A little frustrating, because I wanted to watch 8 hr.s of movies during the 9 hr. flight, and only enjoyed 2 hrs. worth.

I will be flying this weekend and was hoping to rent some movies on iTunes and then watch them on the plane. I will be downloading them directly to my iPad from the internet.

I was going to download them on Tuesday, and then watch them on Saturday. It sounds to me that if you wait 24 hours AFTER you download the movie, a wi-fi connection is needed to start watching the movie.

I have seen people prove the "wi-fi needed to watch rented movie" theory wrong, by downloading a movie and then shutting off wi-fi and playing the movie without problems, but they started playing it DIRECTLY after they downloaded it.

So my question is: Can I rent an iTunes movie on a Tuesday and then watch them on a Saturday without any wi-fi connection?

So my question is: Can I rent an iTunes movie on a Tuesday and then watch them on a Saturday without any wi-fi connection?

Yes

As a follow-up question, when does the 24-hour 'clock' start ticking? Is it:

• when the rented movie is downloaded from iTunes to the computer, OR
• when the rented movie is moved from the computer to the iPad, OR
• when the user first hits 'Play' on the iPad?

When you hit PLAY.

Thanks HappySwitcher. To be clear, do I need to be connected when I hit 'Play'?

To be clear, that was your original question...!

No.

You do NOT have to be connected to wifi to play/watch the movie...

Though I do understand the confusion.

The way the thing is written makes no sense and causes this question to come up over and over.

Anyway - enjoy!

Actually that was Mirage52's question 🙂

Thanks for clearing it up for me. I agree that there is lots of confusion out there. It's somewhat ironic that a company which prides itself on simplicity and ease of use has created this lack of clarity in its products and services.

Syncing movies from my MacBook to my iPad doesn't work, even when the devicesare connected with USB, and using iTunes to click and drag the movies. Nothing happens. Movies were charged to my apple account. iTunes thinks the downloading/purchasing is complete, but the movies cannot be watched on my iPad. Do I need to ONLY buy or rent movies straight from my iPad? I thought I could do the same as with books- ie. - movie them from iTunes on the MacBook to iTunes on the iPad. Any workarounds?

Can I rent it on Tuesday on one device and watch it on Saturday on another device?

Way past the original discussion but there was a lot of confusion on here and since this turned up on my search, thgought I would chime in. You have to be connected to the internet in some way, shape, or form to press the play button and have anything work. I found this out the hard way and spent a long ****** off flight not watching rentals that I had bought. The first one was great, but I had started it in the terminal (lte connection). The move is on the ipad, but it wont start if you get in the air and start it like I did with my second one. I haven't tested it, but I suspect you cant watch rentals on apple tv, or your computer/phone/anything without an internet connection. My personal theory is that is has something to do with the copywrite protections. You press play and it sends a signal to the itunes server saying is this rental legit? If it gets back and ok, it starts the 24 hour countdown and you are good to go. If it can't connect to get the ok, then you don't get to watch it. You can press play on several at before you take off, but then you get the 24 hour countdowns on all of them. But who knows what you will actually get watched? I did get refunds from apple the first time it happened as I had rented early and the rentals expired (the 30 days you have to press play) before the filght home on some of them and so I never go to see them. My personal stratagy (which I hate) is to do a rental for each flight leg that is long enough and add one I bought outright since I knew I would want it. Press the play on the rental then go to the purchased movie after that so if you don't finish it you aren't screwed. But it means having patience to to not watch a purchase or do re-runs. You should be able to do some kind of intent to watch that lasts for 24 hours that okays pressing play. Then if you don't press play you have to be connected again. The device would need to be connected to declar intent and no other device would be able to declare intent or press play until the original device connected again via internet and said it never had the play button pressed. Couldn't be that hard to implement considering they already have it set up to be connected to press play. "press here to declare intent to watch movie not connected to the internet" "Warning, no other device will be able to watch this movie until you are connected to the internet again" Go apple, make us happier!

I'm sitting in Barcelona right now. 24 hours on the planes. Rented one movie bought a TV series outright. iTunes won't even let you view the list of things you have available without an internet connection. I was given no idea this would be a problem when I purchased them. This is why I got the iPad. I want ALL my money back.

Rental is limited to the specific device you rented it on. Rental is for 30 days, but you have 24-hours to play it. the 24-hours begin once you hit play.

I've got 3 out of 5 rentals to play on the plane, using a Airport Extreme with a broadband connection that has NO TROUBLE AT ALL rapidly downloading huge system updates, but, for unknown reasons unrelated to my connetion and most likely related to Apple's server load, takes two days to download a regular (NOT HD) movie completely.

For the movie that said "download complete" but would not play past 24 minutes, Apple refunded me through iTunes, after I returned from my trip.

Not quite ready for prime time.

but I have faith I will be able to use it by 2015.