Why does gen 4 Apple TV not play rented movies that play iTunes as well on gen 3 Apple TV? All other local media, movies and music, play normally.

I have the same issue. I also have an issue where the new atv4 says some of my purchased tv shows are not available in the Canadian itunes store when i try to stream from the cloud, and yet they play on any number of my other ios devices.

Hi

Rented movies will only play on the device they are ordered on

If ordered on ipad they will only play on ipad.

Purchaced movies will play on all your Apple devices .

Cheers

Brian

I have the same issue. I cannot play rented movies on my new Apple TV 4. They play fine on my Mac and on my older Gen 3, Spent an hour with Apple Helpdesk, they made me try everything, rebooting, restoring etc. In the end, they couldn't help. I'm using Ethernet, not wireless.

BTW, the advice from Briansyddall above is wrong. I have always downloaded rented movies to my Mac first before watching them on my Apple TV. I've had Gen1, 2 and 3 and they all worked this way. Only the Gen 4 doesn't work.

Exactly. Same issue. Briansyddall is incorrect. See here: About renting movies from the iTunes Store - Apple Support

I was able to get rentals to play on my 4th generation ATV using Airplay. But it had some buffering issues for at least the first 30-45 minutes (and I have everything wired with ethernet, no wifi).

Whenever I try to access rentals through home sharing, I can see the rental movies listed on the ATV, I click to start them, the screen goes blank as if it's going to start, then it just pops back to the homesharing menu again. If I start watching on my Mac, then go to ATV homesharing, it asks me if I want to resume from where I left off - so it's definitely registering the movie there. It just won't play it back. Keeps popping back to the menu with no error message or any indication about what's wrong.

I tried rebooting Mac and ATV to no effect.

I'm guessing this is a bug Apple will need to fix through an update, rather than something with a clear workaround. But if anybody can figure this out, please post!

I saw this in a help file, but that has NEVER been true for me. I've always rented on my iMac iTunes, then later watched via my Apple TV. Never had an issue, not once. I get the new apple TV 4 and expect a better experience. Only to find all these problems. I have a rented movie now on my iMac that I can't play on my Apple TV 4.

If I go to my computer on the Apple TV I do see it. I start to watch it. It starts to load, screen goes black and shows buffering. And then stops and returns to the menu. And worse, it tells iTunes that I've played the movie, so the counter starts to delete it in 24 hours.

There is a bug, one of many.

This is what I have seen too. The movie seems to start playing and then jumps back to the menu. The other thing that I noticed is that when I go back to my Mac, there is an error message on the screen that says something like 'This operation could not be completed." I could play the movie on my Apple TV over AirPlay but that's a pain because my computer is some way from the Apple TV in another room.

I have switched back to my Apple TV 3 until Apple come's up with a fix.

Yes - now that you mention it, the first time I tried to access the rental from ATV I got the same error message ("operation could not be completed") on my Mac.

I Spent hours working with apple support over the weekend with no luck.

tvOS 9.0.1 update has just become available. Haven't been able to check with a rental yet.

I'm having the same problem. I updated the software and it didn't help. I hooked up my gen 3 and the rented movie played without any problems. I noticed that the time had already started to run from when I tried to play it on the gen 4. I'm using a PC Windows 10. There was a message on my computer that "Apple was unable to complete request. Try again later." Purchased movies and music are not a problem.

Same issue! Rented a movie for tonight and it's a no go. Very disappointing.

Yes. I have exactly same problem. It about time Apple made a statement about this.

Apple is aware of this but has chosen not to do anything about this due to the small percentage of people that rent movies and view it on their Apple TV through home sharing.

a very weak excuse!