If I rented movie on ITunes on Mac, can I watch on Apple TV

AltitudeArts wrote:

Post a video, then. Mine is set up properly, but there are no rentals, only purchases, visible. Apple Tech Support says you can't do it, either. And it won't mirror due to DRM. Please prove me wrong.

Access under Computers on AppleTV using Home Sharing as mentioned earlier - once fully downloaded on the computer.

You are correct that Mirroring will not work - Mirroring is a non-secure screen sharing technology that could be intercepted to copy video. You can however use standard Airplay to 'push' the downloaded stream to AppleTV to play there, or select on AppleTv which 'pulls' the video stream across to play.

Mirroring is quite separate and poorer quality as it recompresses the display video.

Mr. Luigi wrote:

I must say...this is one heck of a pain. This would all be much easier if you could go to "Movies" on your Apple TV and see a listing of all your active rented movies...even those not rented on the Apple TV. Personally, I think the way Apple has this set up goes against its mantra of..."It just Works."

It's not really a pain just confusing - it is in fact a pretty old feature - it's streaming from the cloud that's new.

I agree they could combine the two which might be nice for new users but it would actually cause problems unless you had an entry for cloud vs local streaming items.

Many of us relied on streaming from purchases downloaded to local iTunes libraries as our internet connections were too slow to play rentals/purchases on the fly. If you combined local vs cloud libraries you'd either have to have a setting to decide which copy to use or two entries under the main media categories.

Personally I wish they'd sort Music out as that is a shambles.

markferg33 wrote:

Yes I thought this was the case so I looked through all options on the Apple TV and it doesn't seem to have any SD options. Do you know where/how I would do this?

This was one of the annoyances those of us who 'grew up' with ATV 1 found with later units - ATV 1 offered the choice of SD/HD to rent/buy when you searched for an item - with ATV 2-4 you only see available SD or HD content depending on the store setting (or at least that's what happened with ATV 2-3) - it was really annoying when you'd found an item in iTunes on a computer but couldn't replicate the search on AppleTV - often the movie was in SD only and a search would fail if you configured the store for HD. Must check if they've fixed this yet.

Phil, your explanation of the mechanics involved makes sense. I apologize, but from this user's viewpoint the UI end of things isn’t intuitive. My version of intuitive would be:

I'm on a computer or Apple device in iTunes (maybe at work, you never know what goes on when no one's looking)

I see a movie I want to rent.

I select that movie and tell iTunes I’ll watch it later.

I go home, take whatever Apple device I want to use, go to iTunes and under a menu like “Rented” watch what I ordered.

As opposed to go home, pick my device, spend a half hour or so trying to figure out why I can’t simply watch what I paid for, turn to Google which gets me to Apple Support finding others who commiserate and hopefully someone’s posted a solution that works.

Someone mentioned that the current system is a hold over from when Apple wasn’t a streaming company and most people didn’t have the connection speeds so downloading media to the individual appliance made sense. (If that was you I apologize for not giving you credit.) However that was how many years ago? Now Apple is a streaming and services company; and most people do have the bandwidth to support that. Especially when there are already other companies such as Netflix, YouTube, Pandora providing those services. If Amazon can provide me product regardless of device, then a company that sells $10,000+ watches can afford to put more effort into their UI and customer experience, which was once their hallmark. As opposed to counting on Google, or DuckDuckGo, and their customers providing solutions.

Last apology for using an opportunity for another rant. Thanks for listening.

A rental is not a purchase so it won't be available in the cloud. That has to do with the agreements with the providers. The alternative would be to rent on an IOS device and then use AirPlay to stream it.

Altitude,

Whoever you spoke with at Apple support isn’t as knowledgable as the people on this forum. Hope this helps in lieu of video. The following configuration worked for me (if the screen dumps don’t upload then provide me with an email address and I’ll send them to you):

Check list for latest version of iTunes:

iTunes> Preferences> Sharing Preferences:

Share my library on local network & Share entire library enabled

Home Sharing computers and devices update play counts enabled

File> Home Sharing enabled. (If you see Turn Off Home Sharing then it’s enabled.)

iTunes window: Rented should appear next to My Movies. Clicking on it should show the movie you rented.

iTunes> AirPlay icon: select the AppleTV you want to use

(Not sure if this is necessary and it hasn’t been mentioned previously. However this is the way iTunes was configured & worked on my setup.)

Then on AppleTV you’ve selected

Settings> Computers

Where you enable Home Sharing if it isn’t enabled. If it is then turn it off, then when it’s off, turn it back on. You’ll have to use your Apple ID & password

Go back to the main screen of your AppleTV & click on Computers

Where you should see the following:

Click on Rentals, followed by clicking on the movie you want to watch. Leave the device the movie was originally downloaded to on through the entire movie.

(Quick review: No Escape, highly improbable but suspenseful, intense movie and entertaining. Pierce Bronson milks the James Bond personna one more time.)

If you have a personal movie saved from Photos on iCloud it will appear in iTunes main window. (Thus another opportunity to shameless show grandkid.) When done watching movie, turning off the device you downloaded the movie to (in this case my MacBook Air) will make all this disappear from the AppleTV.

Hope this helps.

Especially when there are already other companies such as Netflix, YouTube, Pandora providing those services. If Amazon can provide me product regardless of device,

Pandora is a music service, it does not provide movies at all.

The Rental is a very different beast altogether, and must be treated differently to comply with the studios and right holders. All this is done to avoid piracy as much as possible.

Both Amazon and Youtube do something very similar to iTunes with their rentals

(From Amazon's own terms of service):

Downloading: You may download videos you rent to one compatible download device, such as Fire tablets and Android and iOS devices. Once you have downloaded a rental video to a Fire tablet, you may not download that video to another device or simultaneously watch it on more than one device using the same Amazon.com account.

(From Youtube's):

You can not view or download the rental content simultaneously on more than one device.

https://www.youtube.com/t/usage_paycontent

Netflix is a streaming service, they don't do rentals. As long as your subscription is valid you can log into netflix from anywhere and watch a movie. But there's no way for you to get the movie file, or actually watch the movie from Netflix while offline. while iTunes Rentals allow you to do this. Netflix however also have device limits for simulataneous playback.

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/29

Rentals are handled the way they are, to prevent piracy. This is part of the agreement with the rights holders (studios) for iTunes to offer movies for rental.

At the end of the day, its simple, if you rent on a computer, you can move the rental to any other device you want. but just once. If you rent on Apple Tv or an iOS device the rental stays there.

The easiest way to handle this if you don't know if you can finish watching the movie on the device you are going to rent it on, is to simply rent it on an iOS, iPad or iPhone.

From there you can simply AirPlay it to an Apple Tv if required or watch it directly on the ios device.

Great Tip. I can see them now!! Thanks !🙂