Rental play failed, now Play is greyed out. How to resume watching?
The movie I rented from iTunes on my iPad (with 8GB free) stopped playing after 30 minutes with the ambiguous message that the movie could no be played. Prior to that it had been stuttering intermittently, i.e. the audio would keep playing but the video would freeze and/or speed up randomly.
Now the movie still appears in the Videos app under "Rentals" but the play button triangle is greyed out.
If I try to re-download the movie from iTunes, it wants to charge me a second time for the rental. There is no iCloud icon or GET button,
The movie does not appear listed under "Purchases" (presumably because it's a rental).
The 24-hour rental viewing period has NOT expired yet . I rented the film two hours ago, started playing it an hour ago, and it quit half an hour ago. My iPad has no restrictions on age, etc, and there's nothing shady going on with my region. Like I say, the movie was playing, then it quit, now it won't play. And I don't want to pay a second time to watch it.
My attempts at troubleshooting:
Restarting the iPad had no effect.
Connecting to a Mac via USB, shows nothing. i.e. if I run ITunes on the Mac, and select iPad to see what's stored on the iPad, the movie does not appear listed.
I have written to Apple Support and requested a refund or credit so I can re-rent the movie, but I'd rather just get this fixed so I can resume watching! Any suggestions in the meantime?
iPad 2, iOS 8.4, 32 GB