Why won't my iTunes movie rental play or download?

i just spent 30 minutes trying to see the movie i rented. it *****. i'm done, moved on to something else...cleaning my sock drawer, actually. It's red on the left and whites on the right with room for underwear or hankerchiefs in the middle.

This activity isn't exactly like seeing Barry Lyndon, but it's as close as I've been able to get with iTunes. Kubrick worked with different color schemes, so there's that.

I managed to fix it - although you might say I took a sledge hammer to it. I rented a movie, it wouldn't download. I ended up blowing away the Itunes Library.itl file. Rental showed up and could be watched. Fortunately this is my laptop not my media machine so i could blow this file away but if this happened on my media machine it would be a huge deal.

Buying movies through apple is a really bad idea, you never know if they're going to work anymore. If you want a 100% reliable solution, find yourself a new putlocker site, find your purchased film, and enjoy the show 🙂 oh, and just make sure you have adblocker.

No more black screens, driver updates, software updates, quicktime downloads, computer reloads and many more =D

I also had the same exact problem. None of these solutions worked for me so I called Apple Customer Support. After getting my call transferred to the "proper department" I spent an hour on the phone with them and he could not even give me a solution to the problem. I kept looking at the Terms and Conditions and telling me a lot of things I already knew.

It seems like Apple doesn't even know how to solve their own problems. I'm typing this as I sit on hold for the 4th time during this call. I'm just going to ask for a refund.

I Also downloaded Deadpool, it would not start.

Then I went into the audio, subtitles menu....I had "Prefer AC3 Passthrough" checked....as soon as I unchecked it, the movie started playing with 5.1 audio......something I can not do on Netflix..(Silverlight, HTML5 will not pass 5.1)

But I found a hack to allow AC3 Passthrough, via HDMI. So now I can either send the encoded 5.1 to my Oppo 105d, or send the decoded 5.1, through my Dirac 8 channel software, then to the Oppo via HDMI.

I do not use the Optical out, it's not even connected.

Ever since, I've had no problem playing any movie I've rented or bought.

But iTunes will not send 7.1 to the Mac mini, although according to Apple, such streams can be had via 🍎TV 4 or a new iPad.

I have the problem all the time now. I can't watch a movie on our iMac, it's so annoying. It does however work on our apple laptop, so we've gone from pur huge lovely screen to cramming around a tiny screen. Super disappointing. How do I fix this please apple? My iMac is less than a year old!

Yes, the "Apple Recommended" solution does not work with iTunes 12 (it did with iTunes 10). I found the following (of course on stackexchange rather than an apple site) which holds true from my experience: "As of iTunes 12, you cannot watch a movie while it is downloading. This is a pretty recent change, but has been proven and is 100% reproducible. You have to wait for the movie or TV show to finish downloading. (Trying to play before it finishes downloading shows a black screen, until download is finished -- then play begins as usual). This is a real shame and makes no sense, given that an Apple TV can actually play while streaming... but, guess that's different software..."

I know this is an old post, but I found it while trying to stay calm enduring the black rental screen! I tried all of the things on here and they didn't work. I decided to log out and start completely over....as a last resort after spending a 12 hour ride trying to get it to play so my daughter could do her homework (an essay on the movie). Guess what, that was my fix. I was about to throw the computer out the window and logging out made it work! ♀

I've noticed numerous times, I've had to log out, restart the Mac, or close itunes and reopen it to get iTunes to play my music files as well as movies. It seems to happen if iTunes has been open for quite awhile and not used.

What solved the problem for me was when I downloaded the movie on my second device from my family member's library, I unchecked the box in the lower right corner to not download as HD...When I downloaded to my device as SD it played without any issues. I hope this helps

I'd report the problem to the iTunes Store.

Log in to the Store. Click on "Account" in your Quick Links. When you're in your Account information screen, go down to Purchase History and click "See all".

Find the item that is not playing properly. If you can't see "Report a Problem" next to the item, click the "Report a problem" button. Now click the "Report a Problem" link next to the item.

I had this same issue; black screen with ability to scroll through the entire movie but not play it. I tried all suggestions i.e., updating itunes and deauthorizing/ reauthorizing my computer.

I finally fixed it by going up to the top bar under "Window" and clicking on the "Miniplayer". Once the miniplayer appeared in the left hand corner of the screen I clicked the play button and the full screen opened and began to play the rented movie. I have no explanation for why this works. Give it a few tries if it doesn't work immediatley.

Hope this unexplainable fix helps you too.

I am having this exact same problem, except when I went to mini player it would not play there either. It simply opened up a black screen. Nothing I do will get my movie to play. I am disgusted. With all the hype over how great Apple products are, you'd think they could take care of something like this. No wonder everyone is using Netflix instead.

I too have the same issue with the last 3 movie rentals downloading to about 10 or 12% but then they stop downloading. If I try to play the movie I get a blank screen in the player, but can drag the slider and see still shots of the movie. I tried the miniplayer suggestion but that hasn't worked. Running itunes 11.0.4.4 on a win7 puter with a Samsung SSD hard drive. I ran diagnostics in itunes and all shows OK. Any one got a solution? Unfortunately we can't (legally) use Netflix in New Zealand.

Have the same problem as the original poster. The movie that I can't play I have rented from the iTunes Store before, I thought maybe that's why it wouldn't work. Anyway, the MiniPlayer solution provided didn't work. Apple/iTunes support so far has not helped at all. Unlike whatastupidnickname, I don't see any stills when I move the slider around to different parts of the movie, only black. If I click on the Chapters button/dropdown, though, it shows a list of Chapters with pictures. If I click on one, it goes there but still shows nothing. Running iTunes 11.0.4.4 on Mountin Lion (OS X 10.8.4).