Well, I’ve decided to rent my first movie through iTunes. I’m renting South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. The process is pretty simple. Open iTunes, click a movie, and then click rent. When you rent a movie for the first time, it brings up a prompt to Read and Accept the terms. So, click accept and then it’ll prompt you to try to “purchase” it again. So click rent, and then in a few moments you’ll get a new download with the name of the movie and a new tab “Rented Movies.”

read on for more about the rental process

It takes a bit of time to download, but you are able to play the movie while its downloading. My recommendation, wait until it finishes downloading and then choose a time when you will have enough time to watch the whole movie. The rules, incase you don’t already know, are that you have 30 days to keep the movie on your computer, but once you click play, you only have 24 hours to watch it. The movie can be transferred to your iPhone, or your iPod, but only on the newest generation iPods (that means only the iPod classic, touch, and nano). Another thing, when it “transfers” the movie, it really means it transfers it. You can only transfer the movie when you have in internet connection, because it checks how long you have to watch it. iTunes actually deletes the movie from the computer and moves it to the iPhone/iPod, not the normal way of making a copy. Another thing I find interesting, is that you can’t download HD movies from iTunes to your computer. Only Standard Def movies are available to rent, which kind of seems strange to me. Because if you have a big computer screen, like my 24″ inch iMac, I would still want to watch High Def even if it’s not on a big television screen. So, if you want to download high def movies, grab an Apple TV and hook it up to your HD TV. Then you’ll be in high def heaven. So after you click play, it brings up a pop-up asking you if you want to start your 24 hour time to watch the movie, I clicked yes and for some reason it shows a blank gray screen. So since that doesn’t work I’m gonna try transferring it to my iPhone. Exactly as I thought, the tab for Rented Movies goes away and it is placed on my iPhone. It even showed the expiration date on my phone as well. It brings up a warning about the 24 hour expiration, and… SUCCESS!!! It starts playing and even shows the chapter icon and its pretty cool. So now I’m gonna try syncing it back to the computer. It transfers it back and… its back. Now, since I started playing it on my phone, the Rented Movies tab is back, but the icon is red to show its expiring soon. Still, it doesn’t play on the computer. OK, I’ll restart iTunes, still doesn’t work. Again, I’ll sync it back to iPhone. So, it looks like my first rental experience isn’t going to well. I’ll have an update for all of you in about 23 hours once my rental expires.

Filed under: Apple, Gadgets, Software, Technology, blargKABOOM, iPhone