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HD tv show download scrambled playback

So I have a 2 week old iMac 29", with Mountain Lion. I have downloaded 2 episodes of a TV show from iTunes, however when I go to play them back the screen is scrambled and pink/green with what appears to be the open Safari window flickering through. Other videos (non copy protected and SD) playback just fine.

I have turned off home sharing, made sure the mac is authorised, and tried opening the individual files in Quicktime player, which occasionally seems to work for one of them. I have no other applications running.


If I didn't know better I'd say this is reminiscent of a graphics card issue, but everything else is fine, and I suspect it's to do with copy protection. I tried to lodge a call with Apple's fancy support hotline - it rang me, then connected me to an 'invalid number' and asked me to try again. Awesome.

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Aug 11, 2012 12:02 AM

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Aug 13, 2012 4:14 AM in response to rsp8

Hello all

Well I have the some problem, but with QS x Lion.

New mac mini and timemachine was used to transfer all datas to the new one. Now, HD movie at Itunes is not working, just black window but with sound.

Is there any solution?

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Aug 18, 2012 2:54 PM in response to rsp8

User uploaded file

I also have this problem... these files wont play on quicktime either. i have a 27 inch imac (mid 2011) brought 3 days ago. Its the top spec option (out of the 4 simple choices). I took a print screen but the video appears as a white/grey boxed grid on the photo if that means anything... these files have been copid from a pc and then i also redownloaded them all. very annoying. Sound plays normally.

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Aug 19, 2012 10:10 PM in response to Benblob688

OK so perhaps there is a common theme here, I also transferred my iTunes library from a PC (prior to downloading the shows which were purchased after the move to mac). The post above also relates to files moved via time machine.

I wonder if there is something to do with a transferred/copied library file, rather than the actual movie file itself?


My screen shows green/pink scramble exactly as above, if I pause I can sometimes see the remnants of a safari web page, it's possible to read and recognise words but still scrambled.

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Aug 20, 2012 4:25 PM in response to Benblob688

I see you are also using Parallels. I have a suspicion that this could be copy-protect related to some way in which Parallels interacts with the graphics card. Like you, I have a new mac and very few other programs, but I do use Parallels to run Win7 (same as you). I also get the same checker-pattern screen grab (which I would expect). Oddly it doesn't matter whether the virtual machine is actually running. There are other references on the web to problems with screen sharing, virtual desktops, remote clients etc causing problems.


It plays fine in iTunes on the Parallels virtual machine, btw. I'm not sure how much more time/effort I'm going to spend on this. Maybe just wait for the bug fix - it is very frustrating though...

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Aug 20, 2012 10:31 PM in response to Benblob688

Sorry made an assumption that your disk named Windows 7 was a virtual machine partition - not so?


As you can tell, desperately looking for a common theme as to what's causing the problem, and Parallels was one of my previous theories.

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Aug 21, 2012 4:21 AM in response to rsp8

Nope, it's a boot camp thing, even though it's not windows 7 cause I got the wrong disk and eneded up with windows 8 which is crud without using a right click mouse... But anyway back to the point, I seem to recall having the exact same problem when I tried to play them on my PC (a few years back) and I installed some video codec or something. I was really annoyed cause not only had I spent like £30 on the whole series, but I had payed extra for HD and it looked like a bloody disco on my screen ):|

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Sep 2, 2012 7:15 PM in response to rsp8

I am having the exact same issue on a 2011 MacBook Pro with OS X Lion and 2.3 GHz processor. It's above the specs that iTunes says are required for HD video yet I'm now on my second download (one movie, one TV show) that results in scrambled video. The audio is fine and the video is reminiscent of what you got back in the day if you tried to go to HBO on your cable box without having the channel authorized. It makes me think it's a copy protection/decoding issue.

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Sep 2, 2012 8:31 PM in response to lapunkd

I don't think it's anything to do with the specs of the machine, I posted in the iMac forum too with a youtube link:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4235448?answerId=19381955022#19381955022


Agree it is likely to do with copy protection. I'd be able to see if they played OK on my new AppleTV I got for fathers day except that won't play anything at all high definition due to 'HDCP requirement'. This renders it quite useless.


Thing is, this is ALL HD downloads (legal, paid for downloads) from Apple's own iTunes store playing on Apple's own hardware - why doesn't everyone have this issue?


So much for Apple products just working, I am getting deeply regretful about these recent purchases.

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Oct 3, 2012 6:10 PM in response to rsp8

I am having the same issue playing HD movies from iTunee. I have a Mac Mini, purchased in July. It runs 10.8.2 and has the AMD Radeon HD 6630M 256 MB graphics card. I contacted Apple Support, and their only advice is to delete my movies from the library and Mac, and download them again. I have tried several times with no success.

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Oct 3, 2012 6:49 PM in response to LisaBerto

I did discover that it is a copy protection issue related to HDCP. What I failed to mention earlier is that this first happened when I had my computer hooked up to my 42" HDTV. I initially didn't think this was a factor because when I unplugged the monitor and tried to play the files in iTunes on my laptop screen, the same problem happened. However, I found a page (unfortunately don't remember where now) that said you have to restart your computer to reset the HDCP-compliance flag once it's been flipped to off. When I restarted MacBook Pro the file played perfectly fine.


So then I began investigating my peripherals. My TV was definitely HDCP compliant, the HDMI cable I bought was too according to Amazon. I discovered that some generic Thuderbolt-to-HDMI adapters -- which mine is -- are not HDCP compliant. Not rembering exactly which of the bajillion generic adapters I had bought on Amazon, I went a found one that was specifically labeled as HDCP compliant. It cost 5 bucks and I had it in a couple days. Once I switched it in for the old adapter, no more problems with HD content on my TV!

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Oct 3, 2012 11:20 PM in response to lapunkd

My iMac has never been plugged in to any external device, indeed I don't even know whether it has a video out option! It's also been reset a few times and still no change.


I did discover how to get the HD version playing through my AppleTV using a very particular sequence for switching the components on (TV first, select HDMI input, then turn on the AppleTV).


So disappointing to have this beautiful display and not be able to watch any true HD video on it.

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Dec 30, 2012 10:46 PM in response to rsp8

To round this out, a replacement logic board was the solution to the problem, despite a very argumentative Apple tech insisting it 'had to be' related to authentication. This was done under warranty and is a $700 AUD proposition.

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HD tv show download scrambled playback

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