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Ouch: New Apple TV Doesn’t Trigger 24 Hour Timer for Shows Rented On Mac

Interesting bug (or is it a feature?) discovered by MacRumors about the new Apple TV: if you try to stream a show rented on a Mac’s iTunes, the 24/48 hour countdown for the rental doesn’t get triggered. Instead, you’ll keep seeing the 29+ days message as if  you never opened that file.

This only happens when you stream the file from your computer to the new Apple TV which, as you may know, doesn’t come with storage capabilities like the old model.

So, the new Apple TV will happily stream rentals from your iTunes without any trouble, but it doesn’t seem to recognize they are rentals at all. That means when you start playing a rental from your computer, the 24/48 hour timer never gets triggered. It seems you will be able to watch these rentals as often as you like over the 30 day period.

The way I see it, this is a bug and it’ll soon be corrected by a software update on iTunes’ end. TV executives must not be happy at the moment.

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Federico is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of MacStories, where he writes about Apple with a focus on apps, developers, iPad, and iOS productivity. He founded MacStories in April 2009 and has been writing about Apple since. Federico is also the co-host of AppStories, a weekly podcast exploring the world of apps, Unwind, a fun exploration of media and more, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about portable gaming and the handheld revolution.

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