This is a follow up to my previous post about having issues with renting movies through Apple TV. For what it’s worth, my problem was eventually solved when Apple refunded my money, but it seems as though this problem goes a little deeper. What you are about to read is a posted comment from site member CHASH. It seems to deal with the typical problem everyone is having, but this time he gets Apple Support to reveal some interesting information about why movies may be disappearing.
” I have a rather disturbing update on this issue… Here’s the background:
I first attempted to rent the title, “Volcano” in HD. Upon authorizing
the rental, AppleTV tried to talk to the iTunes Store which resulted in
a, “Cannot contact iTunes Store”. Thereafter, each time I attempted to
get it to download from the Settings menu, I got, “Unable to check for
downloads”… Foolishly, I then tried to rent another movie that I
hadn’t seen, “U.S. Marshalls”, with the exact same result. I waited for 12
hours, 24 and then 48 — no change. So, I contacted AppleCare this
morning…
OK, so here’s the final result:
AppleCare level 1 support went through all the obvious stuff. They then
talked to the iTunes Store who reported that the movies in question
had been removed from iTunes all together. They then dumped the movies
from my queue and issued a refund. As an aside, the reason the iTunes
Store rep gave for having removed the movies from iTunes was because they
didn’t get rented enough. This is obviously bogus since they had just
been added to the database just a day or so prior.
Anyway, here is where the disturbing part comes in… Level 1 sent me
to level 2 since he was concerned that movies appear on AppleTV that are
actually not available – should not happen. Level 2 said that the
movies are not available and that they appear on AppleTV as artifacts of
sorts. That is, the AppleTV database gets synchronized from the iTunes
Store, and it may be overnight before they fail to appear on the device.
Now, I told him that this has the makings of a major problem, since I
rented the movies last Thursday and they still to this day appear on
AppleTV for rent. And, if I go to the iTunes Store on my Mac, sure enough
the movies are nowhere to be found. And to prove my point to Level 2, I
again rented, “U.S. Marshalls” in HD and got the very same symptom,
whereas the iTunes Store group had to dump my queue one more time…
The question is, this chasm between the databases — how big
(time-wise) is it? In this case, it is at least five (5) days and counting. And
the problem is exacerbated by the iTunes Store (or the content
providers) perchant for playing musical chairs with these movie files. This is
not at all good for our customer experience… ”
Just another element to take into consideration when wondering why
movies disappear. All though I would LOVE to know who the hell is renting
up Police Academy 3 in HD and keeping that title around?
