rental movies disappear

Question

Level 4

2,880 points

rental movies disappear

in the past four days i have rented nine movies. all movies downloaded without a glitch to itunes. once downloaded, all movies transferred without a glitch to my ipad. all movies started with the customary 30 days shelf life for me to start watching them. i did not start watching any of the movies. i did not delete any of the movies from the ipad, or from itunes. my ipad has ample capacity with free space of over 35 GB, and I run ios 5.0.1 and itunes 10.5.1. one by one all but one movie disppeared, one day after the other. i could not find them on my ipad when launching the video app, i could not find them on itunes either in the drop down menu below the ipad icon, or in the movies tab. eight out of nine movies just vanished into thin air without an explanation. no error message, no warning message, nothing.

obviously i reported the problem for each of the eight vanished movies to apple. still this particular problem leaves me bewildered?

has anyone had the same experience? any resolution other than either a refund from apple or the ability to download a movie again?

Macbook pro 2.8 Ghz Intel Core Duo-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.7.2), ipad 2, iPhone 4GS both w/iOS 5.0.1

Posted on Nov 16, 2011 6:22 AM

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Answer 1

Limnos

Level 10

411,037 points

Nov 16, 2011 6:29 AM in response to Pascal Bouvier

I have never rented a movie so I don't know the details. I would think that if you made a backup of your drive after making such a download then at least then you'd still have the copy on the backup drive you could use to restore.

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Answer 2

Pascal Bouvier Author

Level 4

2,880 points

Nov 16, 2011 6:43 AM in response to Limnos

did thing about that. amazingly though it seems icloud backup backs up tw shows but not rental movies. and rental movies do not appear anywhere in itunes or itunes related libraries on my mac, hence no possibility to back up any rental movie off of the ipad or the mac.

well not so amazing come to think of it. i believe it is pureposeful, to enforce copyright of movies one rents as opposed to movies one buys.

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Answer 3

Limnos

Level 10

411,037 points

Nov 16, 2011 6:52 AM in response to Pascal Bouvier

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1345103

What happens if you highlight the movie then press command+R to reveal it in Finder?

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Answer 4

Pascal Bouvier Author

Level 4

2,880 points

Nov 16, 2011 6:59 AM in response to Limnos

i am not sure what you mean by that? which movie to highlight? the one i still can see which does not cause me a problem, or the eight that vanished, which by definition are impossible to highlight?

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Answer 5

Dec 27, 2011 8:53 AM in response to Pascal Bouvier

I have had the same problem crop up multiple times in the past two months including most recently watching the same thing happen on my daughter's iTouch. My best guess is a loss of at least 4 rentals for me. She rented 3 movies yesterday (12/26) and I literally watched as 2 of 3 movies just evaporated from her rental que without a trace on both iTunes and her iTouch during the sync process this morning (12/27). The movies were there, not watched and just disappeared.

I called Apple support when the problem first happened to me around the end of November. Apple support could not find the problem, had no solution other than suggesting contacting iTunes for a refund. iTunes support was good with providing follow-up in 48 hours and credit for the movies that disappeared. However, the movies continue to disappear for no apparent reason.

The desire is to have a solution that allows the device to function as intended when watching rented movies on the iTouch.

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Answer 6

zzzxkcd

Level 1

15 points

Dec 27, 2011 9:16 AM in response to Pascal Bouvier

Contact iTunes Support. Ask them for a redownload. 9 out of 10 times you will get one.

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Answer 7

Dec 27, 2011 9:18 AM in response to Pascal Bouvier

They are for rent or you watched them and used up 24 hour rental or anything like that.

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Answer 8

Pascal Bouvier Author

Level 4

2,880 points

Dec 27, 2011 9:25 AM in response to leilaboxergirl

it actually helps when one reads carefully a post.

the rentals that disappeared from my itunes and ipad had not been watched, i had not started watching them and they had plenty of "shelf life" left, i.e. 28 to 30 days.

this is a bug, a major one with rentals. one which apple is aware of but the apple support desk does not know how to solve, nor the itunes support desk. the only "solution" is for them to issue credits to compensate for the vanished movie. it is a solution, but in light of how recurrent the issue is and how time consuming it is to reach the itunes support desk, not an optimal solution.

further, what is the most galling of it all is that rentals are the only data category that cannot be backed up. i mean i have had books disappear once in a while, or documents, but i always was able to recover from backup. not so with rentals.

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Answer 9

zzzxkcd

Level 1

15 points

Dec 27, 2011 9:29 AM in response to Pascal Bouvier

"the only "solution" is for them to issue credits to compensate for the vanished movie. "

That's not true. Apple iTS advisors can regrant downloads, and that is the most common remedy.

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Answer 10

Pascal Bouvier Author

Level 4

2,880 points

Dec 27, 2011 9:33 AM in response to zzzxkcd

the only items that cannot be downloaded again are rentals. the only "solution" is to issue credits. please verify by yourself and reach out to the itunes help desk if you do not believe me.

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Answer 11

Jan 20, 2012 3:01 PM in response to Pascal Bouvier

FWIW - This is happening to me too. They will refund the movies, but it's quite annoying. I restored the iPad and that seemed to help for a while but the issue has returned.

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Answer 12

Jul 26, 2012 10:02 PM in response to Pascal Bouvier

This happens also with TV shows and movies, on iPad and iTunes, for me. It happens frequently. iPad 64GB with more than 35GB free, and an iMac with hundreds of GB free.

I'll start downloading a season of episodes before I go to bed, and despite the bytes counting up when I switch it off, it will frequently when I wake up, none of what I requested will be available, or even listed on the videos list.

This is definitely a bug of some sort. I'd hazard a guess that there's an over-zealous "clean-up" program that deletes the biggest and most easily-replaced media files from i-devices and iTunes.

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Answer 13

zzzxkcd

Level 1

15 points

Jul 27, 2012 9:03 AM in response to plausible_deniability

Yeah, the iTS store is definitely not flawless. :-( I have contacted them before about these types of issues and they don't seem to have the solution to the problem, just a band-aid to the remedies.

Honestly I think that's the price you kind of have to pay with Apple, particularly iOS devices... you sacrifice your ability to troubleshoot your own issues, with the benefit of hopefully not having too many issues in the first place. But when you do have issues...

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Answer 14

t0mi

Level 1

0 points

Jul 23, 2013 8:33 PM in response to Pascal Bouvier

Looks this is still an issue. I just experienced same problem. One movie just dissapeared 2-3 days after download (and I did not start watching).

First I tried transfer to iPad. Transfer looked incomplete, movie icon was grayed out in itunes that showed movie is on ipad, but movie was not in video app. Later, after i restarted iPad and tried to resync, movie disappeared completely.

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