News

iPod Owners Confused Over Movie Rental Compatibility

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 10:45 AM - by

Not every video capable iPod is compatible with Apple's new movie rentals at the iTunes Store, leaving some customers confused about why they can't play every movie Apple offers. Other iPod owners are apparently upset over the limited compatibility, according to Wired.

Apple introduced iTunes movie rentals early in January at Macworld Expo in San Francisco. CEO Steve Jobs said during his keynote that the movies could be watched on a computer with iTunes, certain model iPods, the iPhone, and Apple TV.

The iPod models that support movie rentals include the iPod touch, iPod classic, and third generation iPod nano -- all models that don't stream video through older docks.

While Wired implied that Apple intentionally left fifth generation iPod owners out in the cold by stating "Apple prohibits iTunes movie rentals" on older iPods, it appears more likely a technology limitation imposed by DRM restrictions. Older iPod models, like the 5G iPod, could potentially allow someone to play through to a recording device to make a copy protection-free duplicate.

Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe added "The other factor is whether you have a secure real-time clock. Why do I want a secure clock? Because you don't want people messing with the time code since [iTunes] rentals are only supposed to last 24 hours after you start viewing them."

That may not, however, be much of a consolation to 5G iPod owners that want to watch rented movies on the go. One Apple forum poster commented "If all of the other services are available for the 5th Generation Video iPods, why not rentals?? I have a tough time believing it would not be technically feasible."

[Thanks to TMO reader MacKauai for the heads up.]

11 comments from the community.

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A guest said: (hide)

Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:14 pm

The thought that you can record the videos playing on a IPod through a recording device and thats why does not make sense. You can play the video out of a mac and into an EyeTv and accomplish the same thing. In fact that is a great way to rip videos that defy decryption. I would usse the DVI to Video convertor on my MacPro and input the video and audio to the EyeTv input.

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A guest said: (hide)

Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:54 pm

Good point. There excuse is just hot air. Apple is just trying to force iPod owners to buy a new one to squeeze more dimes out of our pockets. Much like the original response to "my iPod battery died" was "buy a new iPod". Enough public outrage made them create a battery replacement service. I'm not sure that enough people rent stuff off of iTunes to make them change this policy though.

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A guest said: (hide)

Wed Jan 30, 2008 8:24 pm

Quote
Guest wrote:
The thought that you can record the videos playing on a IPod through a recording device and thats why does not make sense. You can play the video out of a mac and into an EyeTv and accomplish the same thing. In fact that is a great way to rip videos that defy decryption. I would usse the DVI to Video convertor on my MacPro and input the video and audio to the EyeTv input.

Not a particularly good comparison since your method involves using an additional cost (and non-Apple) piece os hardware.

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A guest said: (hide)

Wed Jan 30, 2008 8:26 pm

Quote
Guest wrote:
Good point. There excuse is just hot air. Apple is just trying to force iPod owners to buy a new one to squeeze more dimes out of our pockets. Much like the original response to "my iPod battery died" was "buy a new iPod". Enough public outrage made them create a battery replacement service. I'm not sure that enough people rent stuff off of iTunes to make them change this policy though.

Or, more likely, this is a result of the DRM the studios required. You can argue that Apple shoud not have agreed to this but then Apple would not have movie rentals available at all.

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A guest said: (hide)

Wed Jan 30, 2008 9:22 pm

Quote
Guest wrote:
Quote
Guest wrote:
Good point. There excuse is just hot air. Apple is just trying to force iPod owners to buy a new one to squeeze more dimes out of our pockets. Much like the original response to "my iPod battery died" was "buy a new iPod". Enough public outrage made them create a battery replacement service. I'm not sure that enough people rent stuff off of iTunes to make them change this policy though.

Or, more likely, this is a result of the DRM the studios required. You can argue that Apple shoud not have agreed to this but then Apple would not have movie rentals available at all.

No, they could issue a firmware upgrade to support the rentals on my iPod. Unless Apple really does develop such highly insecure iPods. DRM is most certainly part of their contract, but not supporting old iPods most certainly has nothing to do with studios.

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A guest said: (hide)

Wed Jan 30, 2008 9:38 pm

Quote
Guest wrote:
Quote
Guest wrote:
The thought that you can record the videos playing on a IPod through a recording device and thats why does not make sense. You can play the video out of a mac and into an EyeTv and accomplish the same thing. In fact that is a great way to rip videos that defy decryption. I would usse the DVI to Video convertor on my MacPro and input the video and audio to the EyeTv input.

Not a particularly good comparison since your method involves using an additional cost (and non-Apple) piece os hardware.

I could just as easily use a MacBook Pro to rent the movie and play it over S-Video to a recording device. There are countless ways to do this. The analogy is perfectly fine as an abstraction, you don't need to worry about the specific details since we can change them numerous times and still achieve the same result.

One user's comments about using a 5th gen:

"As a test, I went ahead and bought "Chuck & Buck" from iTMS. Not only was the file size identical (1.06 GB), iTunes itself saw no difference between buying the movie and renting it. I was able to transfer the newly purchased copy of the film to my iPod with absolutely no problem. This is NOT a matter of hardware not being capable, it is a decision for whatever reason, not to update the software on older generation devices to work with the new rental system."

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iBill said:

member since 23 Feb 2005 with 512 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Thu Jan 31, 2008 5:13 am

Quote
Guest wrote:
Quote
Guest wrote:
Quote
Guest wrote:
The thought that you can record the videos playing on a IPod through a recording device and thats why does not make sense. You can play the video out of a mac and into an EyeTv and accomplish the same thing. In fact that is a great way to rip videos that defy decryption. I would usse the DVI to Video convertor on my MacPro and input the video and audio to the EyeTv input.

Not a particularly good comparison since your method involves using an additional cost (and non-Apple) piece os hardware.

I could just as easily use a MacBook Pro to rent the movie and play it over S-Video to a recording device. There are countless ways to do this. The analogy is perfectly fine as an abstraction, you don't need to worry about the specific details since we can change them numerous times and still achieve the same result.

One user's comments about using a 5th gen:

"As a test, I went ahead and bought "Chuck & Buck" from iTMS. Not only was the file size identical (1.06 GB), iTunes itself saw no difference between buying the movie and renting it. I was able to transfer the newly purchased copy of the film to my iPod with absolutely no problem. This is NOT a matter of hardware not being capable, it is a decision for whatever reason, not to update the software on older generation devices to work with the new rental system."

Or just possibly that there is no capability for Apple to make this update, at least as would be necessary to satisfy the studios..

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A guest said: (hide)

Thu Jan 31, 2008 10:31 am

I don't see what capability is missing. The analog hole is just posturing, as we've shown that you can use Apple hardware that's not an iPod to do the same thing. The clock, assuming that it really is a problem and not just an Apple sympathizer creating an excuse, can be fixed through an update. Sorry, this is corporate greed, just like the $20 firmware update for the iPod Touch. Apple doesn't get revenue sharing from AT&T on the iPod touch, so they charge for the firmware upgrade.

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Intruder said:

member since 07 Jul 2004 with 2843 posts, TMO Mac Specialist, send him a message or view his profile

Thu Jan 31, 2008 7:41 pm

I'm glad to see we have so many folks here that fully understand every aspect of the hardware and software design of the gen 5 iPods.

It's as if they were all on the design team, rather than a bunch of folks guessing without knowledge of what is really in the systems.

I know I'm impressed. /sarcasm

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A guest said: (hide)

Thu Jan 31, 2008 11:02 pm

Well, the gen 5 iPods are pretty well understood at this point, there is no mystery there. I for one have been involved with the rockbox project, which has done exactly what you smugly imply we cannot do, which is to write a completely new third party firmware for the device. In fact I've been involved with it on the 4th gen, the 5.5 gen, the gen 2 mini (which is mostly done at this point, but still some work to do). So yes, I do understand that hardware and software design fairly well that goes into these devices, as many other people, it's not classified information. Not just Apple devices, I've worked on Cowon and Archos as well and there are ports . There hasn't been much done with the 6th gen yet (a.k.a. Classic) but that is mostly due to the fact that it is fairly new and less popular than the other new models. At some point I'm sure we'll get into the "Classic" line, but at this point, there is nothing to suggest that the hardware itself is a limiting factor (in fact it is Apple encrypting and changing where the firware is located that appear to be the biggest roadblocks to reverse engineering a firmware). The hardware on the 6th is quite different (the jack is one obvious example), so we'll need to do a whole new port to support the hardware (new drivers, new interrupt & power handlers, etc), but there is no reason that software could not extend the DRM to the 5th gen. That is to say, there is no hardware reason that software couldn't be written for it, but it appears that there are business reasons why software won't extend the DRM to the gen 5 ipods.

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Intruder said:

member since 07 Jul 2004 with 2843 posts, TMO Mac Specialist, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Feb 01, 2008 12:08 am

I have implied nothing.

Are you the only guest posting about the reason behind why the gen 5 doesn't support rental movies?

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