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January 17, 2008

tips

Adjust the system date to procrastinate watching rented movies

Posted Jan. 17, ’08, 10:00 AM PT by Aayush Arya
Category | Tips

iTunes rentals and system dateTUAW has a little tip from reader Jack that allows you to bypass the thirty days time limitation before iTunes deletes rented movies from your Mac. It turns out that, at least until Apple releases iTunes 7.6.1, you can just change your system time and extend it to as far beyond into the future as you want to get that many days for watching a rented movie.

This does not, however, work with the 24-hour “viewing period” so once you start watching that movie, you have to finish it within the day. One can only imagine what would’ve happened had it been a process as simple as changing your system time to get an extended viewing period for any rented movie. Apple would’ve had a pretty hard time trying to convince users to upgrade to iTunes 7.6.1 (which would probably have been released by now, mind you).

Anyway, no such luck as of yet. All you can do right now is keep messing with your system clock until you find the time to watch that movie you rented from the iTunes Store. While we are on the subject, can we just have a show of hands please? How many of you have rented movies from the iTunes Store? How was the experience? If you haven’t, do you intend to in the near future?


Update: Gizmodo reports that, at least on a computer running Windows, it is indeed possible to prolong the viewing period of 24 hours to an indefinite amount of time using the same method — just take your system clock on a time machine ride to the future. However, I’m uncertain whether this trick will work on Macs too and since Apple has little love for countries other than the U.S., I have no way of finding out. If any of you readers decide to get a little adventurous, we’d love to hear the results. Also, expect iTunes 7.6.1 any day of the week now, and don’t be surprised if it gets automatically downloaded and installed and locks out your system if you’ve changed the system time. Just kidding. (Or am I!)


5 Comments

Goobimama said:

From what I've heard, the better way to do it is to buy the movie into the future and then take your time back to the current date. Although, this can turn against you if you are regularly rent movies cause going into the future will have the opposite effect on the countdown.

Still, cheating 'the system' in a way pointless. If you wanted to cheat it in the first place, why not just hit the bittorrent network?

January 17, 2008 10:36 AM
Sean Coffee Author Profile Page said:

I feel that posts like this are harmful to the concept of fair use. Isn't it one of the long standing assertions of anti-DRM activists that "honest users" of digital work resent being treated like criminals from the outset?

To so cavalierly tell people (on a site run by a reputable magazine) how to cheat the system -- without a single word of acknowledgement that it's against the EUA, and is, in fact, fraud -- does a lot of harm to a good cause.

January 17, 2008 12:49 PM
Nathan said:

I am amazed at how people have no problem trying to rip off the movie studios and/or apple by not working around their rights, and basically steal from them.
Everyone is quick to say movie studios are so greedy, and cry when apple charges money for upgrades, yet keep stealing from them.
Hypocrisy indeed!

January 17, 2008 1:16 PM
jason said:

Isn't it one of the long standing assertions of anti-DRM activists that "honest users" of digital work resent being treated like criminals from the outset?

And aren't these arbitrary limitations perfect examples of honest users being treated like criminals from the outset? The 24-hour viewing window in particular strikes me as severely draconian, and will certainly keep me from giving Apple any money (in this instance)

January 17, 2008 1:27 PM
goobimama Author Profile Page said:

24 hour viewing is standard across rentals all over. $3 per movie per day sounds quite nice to me. And unlike others, here you have a 30 day window to choose which day you want to watch it.

January 18, 2008 6:03 AM

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