Ipad 2 movie rental issue..."cannot open"

I had the same thing happen to me. I am not sure as to the cause of the problem but I did find a way to get my videos to play. I simply logged on to a wifi network and tried to play the videos again.

I think it has something to do with authenticating the rental time frame. I only began having the problem once I installed iOS5 on my iPad. Hopefully a fix is in the works.

Had this problem tonight too - not very happy about it - has anyone found a fix about it yet? This is very poor quality!

Same problem here. Anyone find a solution?

Same here... landed, got on a network, and suddenly it worked fine. For some reason it needs to check something on the network before moving forward. Really annoying... it's as if Apple never once considered that people would be watching rental movies in an offline environment. Astounding, actually.

I know this is a first world problem but it really *****. On a 4 h Amtrak ride. Work capacity is limited as neither iPad nor iPhone can join the useless Amtrak Connect. Good thing I rented two movies! Oh wait, I star watching one and get "cannot open" 15 minutes in. Then the other one won't work. Outrageous. I am not renting any more movies from Apple.

I have iphone 4 with ios5 and have the same problem, except that connecting to a network doesn't solve it, nor does changing my store login in settings (which I tried because, of course I've been landed with 2 accounts since upgrading to iCloud and can't combine them, but that's a whole separate gripe isn't it!) I've also contacted Apple and will post again if I get any real information out of them.

what up everyone just thought I'd drop some knowledge rented movies are streamed not downloaded you need an actiove internet connection to play them (source: applecare employee) booyow

Totally untrue. Rented movies are downloaded and a streaming connection is not required. The error occurs when an Internet connection is not available to validate the download at the start of the 24-hr rental period. If you will be watching the rented movie on a plane or elsewhere offline, you will want to attempt to open the movie before going offline. This triggers an alert about starting the 24-hr period, which you can decline. But it does validate the download and allow you to start it any time within 30 days, even if offline. I know, I have watched plenty of movies offline after figuring out this little bug.

I just had this problem with two films. doenloaded start watching first movie. power off ipad 3 and then when go to restart movie i am SoL. great pple ... i have a $600 brick . great investment. we purchased these to use online and off. WOULD YOU GET ON IT AND FIX THIS PROBLEM. ANYone knwo any good blogger who vcan write about this?

So it appears that no one has found out what the problem is on this issue. Really sad that I got an iPad and can not watch movies on a flight. I have called support twice and no one can provide an answer. They credited me for the movies but this does not solve the issue. This is a very big problem.

Just ran into this as well. Kind of confused what triggers it to reauthenticate the time stamp. I watched 3/4 of a

movie and it just stopped the movie and won't allow me to watch anymore till it gets network access. Not sure why they added this in the latest iOS, but I'll be calling for a refund when I get off the plane and not renting anything else from iTunes till its fixed.

I rented 4 movies. I just finished watching John Carter on my iPad. I went to the other rentals and now I get 'cannot open' when I click to play them. I then clicked on John Carter again and I get 'cannot open'. How can this be? I just watched the movie and as soon as I finish I cannot watch it because of the 'cannot open' message and I still have 22 hours left on the rental. The other 3 movies have never been watched.

This is ridiculous. I powered down the iPad and the brought it back up. Still it will not play my rentals. I have paid for these movies. I am in an area when I do not have internet connection and I rented the movies for this specific time. My money has been wasted. Who do I contact for a refund? And what is the solution to this annoying problem so that it doesn't happen again?

I just had this problem. I rented 5 movies for a cross-country flight. Halway through the first one, I get "can't open" on all movies. What a pain. I won't be renting from the Itunes store again.

I had the same problem too! I downloaded 7 rental movies for a week's fishing trip in France (NO internet connection for the week). Started playing the 1st one on the first night there, and it seemed just fine. Stopped the film halfway through, and when trying to start it again later that evening, got the dreaded "cannot open" message! Tried all the other films (including the one I'd already started to watch), and got the same "cannot open" message. None of them worked for the entire trip. When I got home the following week and connected to WiFi, they all started playing just fine. Turned the iPad to airplane mode, and started getting the error message again.

I opened a case with Apple Support (who have refunded the payments for all 7 movies) and they're trying to tell me it's a download issue! I'm not so sure - I think the movies are all downloaded just fine - but it seems to be some sort of validation issue requiring internet connection (though, if that's the case, I don't know why the one I'd already started to watch was giving the same error message when I went back to complete it!??)

On their latest support email, they've said the following....

"when you download more than 2 movie rentals at a time they will not be completely downloaded and will not play completely and will show the message "cannot open", therefore I advise you to whenever you download movie rentals always download one at a time"

I'll try this next time, as I did download all 7 rentals at the same time, but I'm still dubious that it's a download issue as I've definitely downloaded multiple rentals previously, and not suffered this problem before

I'm doubtful too. I've had this happen to me twice now, and both times it happened when I only downloaded one film.