A question in a forum: Rent or Buy Movies from iTunes?
Some answers from users:
- We buy it on Apple TV if it is great and we want to watch again. Otherwise, we will rent from Redbox.
- If I’m renting, I normally just do it on demand through my cable company. If I’m buying, then I’ll do it through iTunes.
- Both I rent on iTunes sometimes but only buy on Apple TV mostly for kids’ movies, but I’m up to 49 currently purchased.
- I have a really hard time justifying renting from iTunes for $5-6 when Redbox just costs a bit over a buck. Maybe I’m cheap.
Are you one of the confused people about this question? Don’t worry, let’s analyze the difference between rental and buying movies on iTunes.
What is the Difference Between iTunes Rentals and Purchased Movie?
Aspect 1. Time of Validity
According to Apple’s official declaration, movies rented (iTunes doesn’t provide TV Shows for renting) from iTunes Store have a solid period of validity, which means you are limited to watch those movie files. Specifically, if you rent a movie from iTunes, you only get 30 days to start watching the rented movie and 24 hours (US) or 48 hours (other countries) to finish once you start. And once it expires, the film will be automatically withdrawn by iTunes and disappear from your hard drive forever unless you rent it again. Learn more.
If you buy a movie from iTunes, you can download it to a computer and store it there or in iCloud, and watch it as many times as you wish. Even if you delete it from iTunes, you can redownload it from your purchase history easily at anytime you like.
Aspect 2. Price & Quality
Since it has a time limit for playing, the movie rented from iTunes is cheaper than a purchased one in general. The price of renting movies on iTunes Store usually ranges from $4.99 to $5.99, while purchasing the movies will cost more, around $9.99 to $14.99.
At this point, you may begin to wonder whether the video quality of iTunes rentals is lower than the purchased due to the different prices. Actually you don’t need to worry about this, the quality of those two is exactly the same. But one thing you should note is that HD rentals are limited to play on Apple TV only.
Aspect 3. Common Restrictions
Although the rental and purchased iTunes movie are different in time of validity and price & quality, they have something in common. Both of them can only be played on 5 computers you have authorized or be transferred to your iOS devices for playback. Because the iTunes movies are protected with DRM.
In other words, you are not allowed to transfer any iTunes rentals and purchases to Android or other non-Apple devices for playback. How to solve this problem? You will find the answer below.
Wouldn’t it be great if you can keep the rental iTunes movies forever as the purchased?
After learn the above aspects, maybe it is still hard for you to decide. So why not to think out a way to keep the rental iTunes movies forever as the purchased? What if we can break the DRM protection of the rented movies from iTunes then keep them in our external hard drives.
Yes, this is exactly the key of solving this problem, here Pavtube ChewTune is highly recommended for you to remove DRM from iTunes rented and purchased movies. It directly cracks DRM protection from iTunes M4V video files and convert the DRM movie for playing on various devices with high quality.
(Click here for Mac OS X 10.5)
Now you can also use this iTunes DRM removal tool to solve the problem left above. After removing iTunes DRM, it is easy for you to play any transferred iTunes rentals and purchased in Android or other non-Apple devices.