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

I also had the issue with being able to scroll through the movie but not being able to play it. To my surprise, the trick with switching to the MiniPlayer and then back to normal fixed it. Thanks for the tip, VFSchreiber.

I tried all of the suggestions in this thread with no success (minelayer, deauthorize). The culprit was actually the fact that I had an external TV plugged into my iMac through the Thunderbolt port with an HDMI adapter. When this was unplugged, the movie played like normal. I believe this is a sort of copyright enforcement, but it doesn't seem like there is any warning or indication as to what the problem is.

I hope this helps someone.

Obviously, quite a few people are having this problem. The fact that Apple doesn't even bother to moderate these forums or have one employee at least cruise through and comment with an apology once in a while is really inexcusable for a company that has a $40 Billion market value and produced profits in excess of $1.3 Billion last year. Come on guys, at least spend a little bit on customer service when people have paid you money to view content. Not communicating at all is basically saying you could care less about the customers.

FINALLY! SOMEONE WHO AGREES WITH ME!

I'm on with Apple support right now and the issue may be which version you are downloading. Most PCs will only play SD version instead of HD. My suggestion would be to download SD version and see if that works.

What worked for me, deauthorized my macbook pro, reboot my macbook pro, relaunch itunes, reauthorize my macbook pro and restart itunes to check for downloads. Found the movie began to download and it played fine.

if restarting itunes wont check for downloads, after you authorized the computer again go to store and click check for downloads, I have caused this error 4 or 5 times and this fix has worked every time. Kinda sad that you have to do this, but meh its apple.

I was having the same problem with an HD movie rental (at first the screen was blank, then it would start but stop and never go anywhere; I could scroll forward and see still screen shots but nothing would play). I experimented with downloading an SD movie--and, actually, the SD movie played just fine.

Later, the HD movie, in contrast, played for about 15 mins when I selected the MiniPlayer, but then it stopped and the problem returned and I could not get it to play again. I wasn't able to download the SD version of this movie because all the option icons (the buy, SD rental, & HD rental) read "downloading" simultaneously.

I had been noticing that my WiFi signal had been slower than usual in the last few days (there were a few rooms in my house where I had no signal at all the day before). So I live-chatted with my internet provider (TWC)--at like 11 p.m. because I was that annoyed that I was 15 mins into Gone Girl and couldn't finish it--and they tested and reset my internet signal & speed. And, lo & behold, that actually solved the problem! Within minutes I was able to play the rest of movie and I haven't had the problem since!

Now, if I could only figure out how to get iTunes to save my CC information as opposed to having to buy gift cards!

I had the same problem, but I managed to solve it by changing the audio features from English AC3 to simply English.

I had the same issue. Changing the sound option from "Deutsch (Deutschland) (AC3)" to "Deutsch (Deutschland)" fixed it for me. The AC3 option was somehow initially selected even though disabled (= shown grayed).

Hello! Had the same issue and solved it by changing AUDIO on right bottom corner from English US (AC3) to English 'US'.

I pressed the play button and the movie started. Hope that solves other queries...

Unplug any external monitors, if any, and try to run on the mac or macbook itself. If that works, then it means the movie has a copy protection prohibition from transmitting the video through an external cable. I forget the name of the schema, but it is a total piece of **** deal.

Deauthorize account from the store drop down

quit itunes

reboot mac

open itunes

reauthorize from the store drop down

play movie

This totally worked for me TOO - only thing that did after MUCh faffing around!!

cheers!

Brand new, I am brand spanking new Macbook Air with iTunes 12.2.2.25.

And none of my iTunes cloud content will play. Black screen. I can scroll through still frames. Can not download movies either. The same content is playing fine on my ipad.

Go Apple! Go team!

What a disgrace.