Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever - Gizmodo Comments

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

fumunda69 — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 16:07:35 EST

I downloaded a movie, then transfered it to my 5th generation and watched it. Before 24 hours had elapsed I set the time on my Ipod back two hours, then transfered it back to my Itunes library. The 24 hour clock changed back to 29 days.

fumunda69

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

morlax — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:22:43 EST

simple fix, keep your time normal, click to rent it, when it comes up as do you want to buy ? change your years to like 2011 and then buy it. no security after that. then let it download. set your clock back. start it. and PRESTO sir morlax has saved the day. i have done it. confirm it for me. thanks.

morlax

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

morlax — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:21:33 EST

I have just tried this. and it does work. Buy the movie, right before it says are you sure you want to buy it change the year and then Start the download, as soon as the timer starts change it back to the date. Let it download, Start the movie, and PRESTO! bam, its working for me. and if i am wrong, i just messed up itunes. But some1 confirm that it is working right. =P

morlax

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Rhane — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:49:52 EST

I just used the service and we only watched an hour the first night. The next night just before the 24 hour period expired we started watching the second half of the movie and our guests were being loud so I reverse back 2 mins. As soon as I did this it blanked all the video and wouldn't let us finish watching it. 24 hours is not enough time. Oh and btw you can't change the system time to watch it over again, they already fixed that bug. I tried that after I read someones post to finish seeing the movie and it did no good.

Rhane

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

gogo2390 — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:13:10 EST

I figured out how to make this work. I however do not have a new ipod, so I cannot test it out. I believe it should, it seems to be troubling, but you get to keep a movie for 4 bux as oppose to 15. Okay first you need an a/v out cable for the ipod, and then a video capture card for your computer. Then you rent the movie and put it on your ipod, then play it back through the card on your computer and save it. Apple doesnt know where the video out is going to, it might as well be a tv, not a computer . Then it saves as an mpeg, and then you add it to itunes, and put it on your ipod with no protection on it because it only recorded the video, nothing else.

Can someone try this out...in theory it should work, but there may be something annoying about it where it won't.

Thanx hope this helps.

gogo2390

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

bmeckel — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 01:03:24 EST

i switched my clock all the way to 2010, then back for both die hard and flightplan. got the s503 also, then i set it back to 2010, within the 24 hour period, and it works fine, theoreically i guess you can keep moving it back to the 24 hour period, though that would be a huge hassle. The other option is to have it have a huge period to be able to keep it, but then only switch to within the 24 hours when u wanna watch it

bmeckel

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

MastaFalse — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:00:27 EST

... I'll take anal bum cover for 7,000.

MastaFalse

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Half off all shafts! — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:48:30 EST

@Adam Frucci:

I did what you see there.

Half off all shafts!

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

drwedge — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:46:10 EST

@ripfire4: Well, in your original comment you said; "Why would you want to hold on to a movie for so long anyway? Once you watch it, just move on."

That implies that you watch a movie once, and you're done.

To further answer your comment; on movies my kids watch all the time, yes, I buy them and rip them to my computer so they can watch it there, on my MBP, on my ipod video, or iphone, if necessary.

drwedge

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

ripfire — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:39:06 EST

@drwedge: How about you buy the DVD instead and play it as much as you want without the hassle.

Besides, I love Ratatouille! I ended up buying it even though I watched it already through Netflix rental. Of course, I could've just "backed it up", but I like the extras and don't like to downgrade the bitrate to fit into a single-layer DVD.

ripfire

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Machete_Bear — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:38:42 EST

@jriga: Airtight defense sir, baseless defamation of character, bravo.

And as we all know, snarky 1337 speak cuts like a knife, surely I won't be bothering you anymore.

Machete_Bear

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

dixon0396 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:05:45 EST

@jriga: "Oh an BTW - Live RENTS movies just like Apple and Amazon. It's just you have to put up with spotty Live service to get to it, and PAY for the service itself! How's that for SMUG?!"

Do you even use LIVE? If you're ONLY renting movies, there is no annual fee with the SILVER membership. So you're wrong. The annual fee is only for everyone else who wants to play games against each other on the GOLD membership. I'm sure you can cough up the $3.50/month for LIVE GOLD if you buy it through Amazon.

dixon0396

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

drwedge — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:59:46 EST

@ripfire4: Do you have kids??? Do you know what it's like to watch Ratatouille a hundred times in a week?

drwedge

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

jriga — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:40:30 EST

@Machete_Bear: LOL ROTFLOL OMG LOL

You said "caveman"!! Ha - have you seen your username, dork? 'machete_bear'!? Do you see the irony there? No? Oh well... most of the rest of us do.

jriga

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

jriga — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:31:50 EST

@Machete_Bear: You think Apple is smug? Look in the mirror, dude. Apple is putting the DRM on the file due to contracts with the studios. I'm sure you think you know all the nuances of bring every single major studio together for a new service such as this, but that's just you wafting in the smell of your own uneducated crap.

Oh an BTW - Live RENTS movies just like Apple and Amazon. It's just you have to put up with spotty Live service to get to it, and PAY for the service itself! How's that for SMUG?! This is tantamount to Apple charging you to use iTunes. Live and Amazon have the same DRM restrictions, just not as much choice - not NEARLY as much choice. Apple is the lesser of the evils, for the moment.

jriga

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

bramachari — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:29:02 EST

What manner of "guzzler" would even try such a thing?

bramachari

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

jriga — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:13:04 EST

@musclemasterflex: "Crapple Macintrash" ?? Are you serious? That's your big statement? Wow. Hey, I have an idea. Take a look at those screenshots above... see the one of the windows date & time panel? See that clock with the cool teal hour/minute hands and pixelated second hand?

I'll take a Crapple or whatever you called it anyday of the week. MuscleMasterFlex... more like StinkFaceWindowsBoy. So there.

Sorry the cracks about you aren't better, but I was desperately trying to find something as asinine as your comment, you know, something you could relate to.

jriga

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Blinklink11 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:01:17 EST

Couldn't I just use something like Tunebite Platinum ([www.dvd-tool.com]) to convert the rental movie (which is in .m4v) to mpeg or something?

Blinklink11

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

timerider42 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:49:07 EST

Slightly off topic:
I don't like the fact that the file sizes for TV shows aren't shown before downloading, I need to know how big a file is. I notice that it's shown for movies by your first image.

timerider42

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

timerider42 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:45:18 EST

@ItsMrJP: lol, just about to mention that.

timerider42

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

smegz — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:40:37 EST

@Adam Frucci:
I was curious about the iPhone playlist "*HIGHLY ILLEGAL DOWNLOA..." The blurred ones were probably N'Sync and Tiffany pl's. :)

smegz

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

freelunch — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:32:03 EST

So... if the file is deleted upon expiration, what is to keep you from creating a backup of the data file & iTunes settings, and then restoring the file and setting the date back any time you feel like watching the movie again?

freelunch

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

cso1982 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:27:36 EST

Where we're going we don't need roads

cso1982

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

uberfu — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:15:16 EST

The only way they can truely fix it - is to alter the DRM_ Because - if they release it as a software update iTunes 7.6.x or whatever - then there's no reason why we can't simply keep the current version of iTunes so we can do this after they release the update_

Same thing that applied to Ringtones on the iPhone when all we had to do was change the file extension of a file to have it show up_ then Apple released an update to iTunes that broke that option_

Easy solution either don't update OR make a copy of the older version before you do update_

uberfu

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

tbwolfinger — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:06:26 EST

Does anyone know if this can work with AppleTV? Since it appears HD rentals can only be accomplished through AppleTV?

tbwolfinger

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

ItsMrJP — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:54:37 EST

HIGHLY ILLEGAL DOWNLOAD
awesome playlist name

ItsMrJP

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

ripfire — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:44:45 EST

Seriously guys. What's the point of cracking the time? I mean, you've already paid your $4 bucks. Does Apple really care if the same person wants to watch the same movie more than once?

ripfire

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

ripfire — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:42:22 EST

@stwf: "I've been burned by the 24 hour limit with UnBox, never again. I just want to keep an HD movie around to demo my new tv to friends, why is that so offensive to Hollywood types?"

How about you buy an HD movie you can show off to your friends, or show a DirecTV HD channel, or download some clips from WMV HD showcase, or....

I mean come on. If you don't have any steady source of HD content, why even bother showing off to your friends?

ripfire

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

frigg — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:31:41 EST

Of course, if the universe starts to contract and time reverses itself, anything you rent will expire before you even download it. Seeing how iTunes doesn't seem to be fully aware of anomalies in the fabric of space-time, I suspect that anyone who rents a movie on the cusp of cataclysmic universal contraction is going to be rather disappointed. Particularly if they sprung for HD, and particularly in the few moments they spend staring at a blank screen before everything around them vaporizes. Apple: please fix this!!!

frigg

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Blinklink11 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:24:19 EST

So, I can't test this right now, but thinking about how to do this with an iPod/iPhone.... would it work if you set your computers clock to say January 17th, 2009, and set your iPod or iPhones clock to January 17th, 2009, and then uploaded the movie to it (then set the clock back to the current date?)

Blinklink11

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

crash — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:15:00 EST

The trick is to pick a date and always set your clock forward to exactly that time/day before hitting play. If you accidently set your clock ahead to an extra day, poof! There goes all of your previous movies. Similiarly, if you hit play without setting your clock forward, you can never use the trick again without losing your flick. Alternately, you can set the clock back every time you get a new movie, but eventually your system clock is going to end up decades behind where it should be. Someone just needs to find a hack for windows to make the clock run backwards...

crash

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

hybrid8 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:08:12 EST

Next update....

If movie expires in > 24 hours, then movie = expired.

hybrid8

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

matt buchanan — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:59:37 EST

@olternaut: Sorry, the secret version of Giz not open to Apple employees is still in the works.

matt buchanan

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

orinos73 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:37:30 EST

Thanks Giz. Cue iTunes update 7.6.1 in 5...4...3...

orinos73

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

olternaut — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:34:22 EST

This is hilarious! :D But at the same time gizmodo I wished you guys didn't report on this.....at least not in the open. How long till Jobs smacks his posse of apple nerds in their foreheads and they start work on fixing this?

olternaut

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Machete_Bear — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:25:41 EST

@mtroute: Ah, a true Mac Fanboy answer if I ever heard one. "don't like Steve's glorious golden shower of benevolence? Go back to your shitty sensible non-apple products you caveman!"

Machete_Bear

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Confuzius — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:13:21 EST

What happens if you set you clock ahead 30 years, buy a bunch of movies, then set it back to present day?
That way you don't have to worry about always having the wrong time set when you want to watch a movie.

Confuzius

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Solo500 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:03:04 EST

@pinolo: the rental model in the US is a video store that rents the movie for $1-3.00 a night. You get flexiblity and higher resolution as well as more features than the iTunes rental presently does.

So what we are looking for is the convenience of the digital world but with the flexiblity that the existing model already gives us. Netflix does that, but with a bunch of older movies (and streaming).

I might not want to watch a standard entertainment more than 1x, but there are alot of ambitious, interesting films that I would like to watch more than once even the first viewing. (Or comedies, where I might want to show someone else a great scene).

Solo500

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

msikk — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:01:26 EST

they should do something like the Movie Pass that Blockbuster has: for say $25 a month rent as many movies as you want, but no more than two at a time, and remove the viewing time restriction.

msikk

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

lolec — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:53:56 EST

Use camtasia to capture screen, let the movie playing and when its done just export the camtasia recording :)

lolec

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

FrankenPC — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:44:39 EST

AWESOME! Now that you 've pointed this flaw out to the world, Apple will patch it. Great going.

FrankenPC

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

mtroute — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:41:04 EST

@Pixelologist:

I though about that when the Apple TV first came out.

[www.troute.com]

mtroute

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

mtroute — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:36:46 EST

@Machete_Bear:
are you stupid, it's not Apple it's the studios dumb-ass.

Get back to your Zune and your WMA's...

mtroute

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

mtroute — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:35:32 EST

you're...

How about an edit button!

mtroute

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

mtroute — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:34:41 EST

@musclemasterflex:

Wow, your such a witty guy...

mtroute

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

chenry — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:33:27 EST

Wow, that's a real amateur mistake there, Apple.

chenry

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Pixelologist — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:32:25 EST

@mikejonas: Actually, I think you're really onto something there. How many movies can you watch at one time anyway? In some ways, it would even beat the Netflix model because you wouldn't have the shipping time there and back before you could start the next flick in your account.

Pixelologist

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Pixelologist — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:29:32 EST

@g1sm0: I'm glad my wife and I aren't the only ones :-)

Pixelologist

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

mikejonas — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:29:15 EST

I hate the 24-hour viewing period limit. What they ought to have established is a Netflix-Mail-Service model: Keep any rental for as long as you want, but you can only have a limited number of rentals under your account at one time.

mikejonas

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

multipleshotsfired — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:23:12 EST

This seems to be a direct violation of the itunes terms of service.

multipleshotsfired

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

genius74 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:22:50 EST

@pinolo:

People gave a suggestion, 72hr rentals. Things come up, My evening never goes as it's planned.

@twylight:

Redbox may not be the best. I've noticed that some people have used this to return crap/wrong/bootleg movies in order to receive a new release for a dollar.

I rented Superbad from Redbox and I got a DVD-R. I got my refund, but I don't think that orginal movie is coming back to the box.

genius74

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

JasonCo — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:22:34 EST

@matt buchanan: Umm... you were hard for 8 hours after watching 300?

JasonCo

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Joey B — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:17:10 EST

@twylight: As much as I love the convenience of redbox (and getting free movies with promo codes) I have never watched a single one that didn't skip like mad or even refuse to play midway through.

Joey B

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

idoru — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:16:04 EST

How long will it take someone to crack this DRM anyway?

idoru

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

aviL — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:14:00 EST

@lladnar: that's a great point, i'm curious about that as well

aviL

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

g1sm0 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:13:18 EST

I agree with Avidgator that 72 hours rental would be much more reasonable. I you have kids and you can't start the movie until after they have gone to bed, then you may be too tired to watch the movie all the way through. My wife and I will often take a whole weekend to watch a DVD or Tivo movie. I'm still excited about Apple's new service though, as I have an @TV and have felt abandoned by Apple until now.

g1sm0

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

matt buchanan — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:13:16 EST

@matt buchanan: Had 8 hours left, even.

matt buchanan

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

MarceloAbans — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:13:07 EST

Hey Machete Bear, it's a rental and it's not apple's fault, its the MPAA's fault for not evolving with tech, apple removed DRM in europe and has pleaded to have this standard practice removed. Look up the open letter steve jobs wrote.

Anyway While this is a cool thing to do I wanna thank Gizmondo for letting EVERYONE on-line know. I expect a 7.6.1 patch to come out. omg! why can't people just not share everything so openly..

MarceloAbans

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

matt buchanan — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:12:42 EST

@yougottabekidding: I'm pretty sure it does go by the clock—when I set it forward, 300 did die, even though in "real time" it hard 8 hours left.

matt buchanan

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Fuzz — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:11:36 EST

You guys jut broke the DMCA. You are totally going to prison. Otis is going to have his way with you. :D

Fuzz

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

jbelkin — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:11:27 EST

THe problem is this presumes you're only to try and keep one movie around forever - otherwise, you're going to need a second computer to plot out what time will kill which movies ... set the day ahead one and NORBIT kills 300.

jbelkin

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

matt buchanan — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:09:28 EST

@redkamel: Yes, but you have to start playing them in the future before you set it back to the present. Hitting play is what is what starts the countdown.

matt buchanan

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Machete_Bear — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:07:29 EST

Fucking apple and their DRM. Do they not get that companies like Amazon and Xbox live are offering full ownership for close to the same price?

They're just so smug...

Machete_Bear

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

redkamel — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:06:32 EST

so can you set your time forward, rent a bunch of movies, set it back to normal (so you have years to watch them)....then rewind the movies before the end so they never get dumped? eh? eh? or did I just figure out the point of the post?

redkamel

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

blueninja — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:03:46 EST

2) as for the crack, has anyone tried setting your computer date ahead into the future, then downloading, so the program thinks the expiration date is 10 years in the future after you correct or settings?

blueninja

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

NigelTufnel — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:02:48 EST

Geeks will always jump through 11 hoops backwards in order to circumvent 'the system' (stick it to man! stick it to the man!), because it's..um, cool I guess. Or something.

All Apple (or any other company for that matter) has to do to make a success of this is to come up with a process that is widely regarded as fair and convenient to use (ala iTunes music downloads). Oh- and then market the crap out of it. The everyday-average consumer will then reward them for their efforts.

Having babbled all that, I'd like to say I hope to see either a longer viewing window, and/or a subscription option similar to the Netflix model, or the one proposed by some intelligent chap on Ars Technica awhile back.

NigelTufnel

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

blueninja — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:02:16 EST

1) Personally, I don't see this as a direct competitor to Netflix of DVD rentals. It is more of a competitor to Movies On Demand on your cable box. I still go out and rent a bunch of DVDs, because I want the extra content and comenetaries and stuff, but sometimes, I just don't want to go out, and hit an On Demand. iTunes will let you pick up an On Demand from wherever you can get a signal.

blueninja

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

xshortx — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:02:06 EST

could you not just use snapshot pro or simillar video screen caprure to record whats playing?

xshortx

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Blue_Mountain — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:00:39 EST

HEY!!! GIZ, would you like a real copy of 300? Apple and iTune is a rip off and all this write up about turning back the hands of time and who is playing God is nonsense.

Blue_Mountain

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

stwf — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:59:15 EST

well, no thanks.
No one can really tell the effects of messing with your system clock, who knows what software might get messed up?
I've been burned by the 24 hour limit with UnBox, never again. I just want to keep an HD movie around to demo my new tv to friends, why is that so offensive to Hollywood types?
This model stinks and will go no where. The proven model is the Netflix one, I pay monthly even though some months I don't get any new movies AND I'm happy.

Maybe Hollywood types assume if users are happy there's a problem and they need to quash it.

stwf

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

djkibblesnbits — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:58:19 EST

Hey, I wonder if there was a way to use the Leopard's built-in Time Machine to somehow extend the time of your rented downloads. Like, you start playing the file, but then, you use Time Machine to extract the earlier, non-played version of the file? Can anyone test this out?

djkibblesnbits

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

NigelTufnel — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:56:28 EST

@twylight: Who gives a turd about these lame download services? Only (potentially) multiple millions of people.

NigelTufnel

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Razta — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:54:11 EST

We need more than 24 hours big movie studios!!! Are you reading this??

Razta

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

engele — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:51:39 EST

Just use screen capture software to re-encode the flick.

engele

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

lladnar — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:49:54 EST

Couldn't this just be a bug in the thing that displays the time remaining? Has anyone confirmed they can watch these after 24 hours has actually passed? It seems possible that whatever displays the remaining time could just have knowledge of the rental date and nothing else, while the actual file knows a little bit more.

lladnar

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

TVGenius — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:47:30 EST

That's cool, my iMac's system clock is busted and stops running when you put it to sleep, then jumps back a few more hours for good measure when it wakes up again. Have to go into Date/Time to uncheck/recheck the auto-update all the time. Started doing it after Geniuses replaced main logic board for the 2nd time.

TVGenius

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

ianmac47 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:41:23 EST

Is there anything that prevents an analog copying of media-- like playing with the output set to a VCR or DVR or DVD Recorder?

ianmac47

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

twylight — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:38:34 EST

red box + any dvd = win
netflix + any dvd = win
I mean who gives a turd about these lame download services

twylight

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

MrThunderfield — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:29:22 EST

Or you could just use Fraps or a similar screenrecorder to save the movie with.

MrThunderfield

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Coder4Life — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:24:13 EST

They do this for a reason.. But I am sure they will just start tracking diff. time zones and so on their databases and will fix this problem...

But I am sure it will be a few weeks before that fix comes out..

Coder4Life

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

pinolo — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:15:12 EST

My opinion is that this issue is exactly what the studios are looking forward to. So the next time they can yell "see people are indeed trying to steal content" so they'll stick to the old business model.
Sometimes I wonder... It is good and interesting to point out the faults of a system. But cannot people just accept some things need to be made step by step? If we, the users, start scaring the S...t out of studios the day they decided to take a bold (for them anyway) step in a promising direction, how can we expect a business model to change?

I am looking forward to the day movie rentals are going to be available in Switzerland. You will have to pay for legal content, get over it. I am interested in paying and am in favour of a sustainable business model in a win-win situation. Is it perfect? Not by a long stretch. But that doesn't make it inerently bad.

Some people said you should be able to watch the movie, once started, for 72 hours. Personally, if I decide to watch a movie, I plan my evening so that I can see it from start to finish. And this is what 99% of people usually do.
I really wonder, instead of all the comments bashing this model, HOW would you improve the model? Please consider that the studios are in the business to make money, and are not no-profit foundations...

I might sound angry, or even arrogant, but please don't get me wrong. I just wanted to add the perspective of someone who is extremely happy with the solution provided and thinks it is a long due step in the right direction. Moreover, I don't think messing with the system clock is going to make a point in favour of any argument. It just gives an excuse not to go along that road.

I just hope iTunes rentals makes it all the way to Switzerland and doesn't get cancelled.

pinolo

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

smitty1123 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:14:47 EST

Or, and I know this is a wild concept, if you want to keep the movie... just buy it.

smitty1123

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

TallDudeFromBrazil — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:14:08 EST

No, i think the point is to "buy" illegaly a movie for 3,99.

TallDudeFromBrazil

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

yougottabekidding — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:09:08 EST

I wonder if he actually waited for the original 9 hours to be completed before truly determining that the self-destruct would kick in or not even though he set his time back to give him 3 years. After all, iTunes could be set to calculate what the remaining time is that it displays on the screen from the system clock, yet use another timer to still disable the movie. i.e., it may say you have 1830 days left to view the movie, yet still disable after the orignal 24 hours is up. Doesn't matter anyway since Apple will just correct the problem. It seems to me that if you want to cheat the system using iTunes, I'm sure there must be a way to record the video and audio that is streaming to your PC. Otherwise, just buy the movie, or wait a 6 months, to a couple of years for it to go on the bargain shelf.

yougottabekidding

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

openfly — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:08:15 EST

there's a 2038 bug in unix time epochs. try pushing ahead to 2030 and things should be okay.

openfly

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Benny Goldman — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:06:50 EST

@Adam Frucci: Makeup Mix
Pillowfight Mix
Jus Mee N Mah Gurlies!1!! Mix

Benny Goldman

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Jesus Diaz — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:05:46 EST

@Adam Frucci: I ran it through Photoshop magic filter and I think one of them says "Love songs for Jason"

Something weird going on here.

Jesus Diaz

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Blackti3 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:03:59 EST

Yeah, I've never understood the "I need to keep this movie forever and ever concept". If a film is so amazing that you have to see it multiple times, just go and buy it so the people involved in it's creation can continue to make more movies. Otherwise find 90 minutes to sit down and finish a film, then move on w/your life.

Blackti3

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

avidgator — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:59:18 EST

The 24-hour "death-clock" is is one of the main reasons why I really have not used MovieLink all that much. A significantly better model would be 72 hours. Case in point, if I start watching a movie at 8PM on Friday night, then get tired before I finish watching(as my wife often does), finishing the movie by 8PM on Saturday is not always feasible. If I could finish watching it by 11:59PM Sunday, that seems more realistic.

avidgator

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

color_guru — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:58:13 EST

Anyone stop to think it may have been designed like this from Apple on purpose? Maybe Apple is all for week long rentals and not just 24hrs. While it's the movie industry that insists it be only 24 hrs.

color_guru

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Wayde — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:54:58 EST

Cool! Except that now that this information is posted all over the web there's that much more pressure for Apple to patch it asap.

Wayde

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Apoc28 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:54:24 EST

Obviously the benefit to this is that before you watch any movie you could just set your system clock ahead 10 years then start the movie and change the clock back. then you could keep your normal clock time.

Apoc28

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

matt buchanan — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:53:38 EST

@Adam Frucci: Nothing to see here, move along plz.

matt buchanan

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

kevjohn — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:51:44 EST

I can still read your playlists. You should blur that some more.

BTW, you watch a lot of p0rn.

kevjohn

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

TheCapt — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:48:43 EST

@ripfire4: Why would you want to hold on to a movie for so long anyway? Once you watch it, just move on.

I think the whole point of the post was that if you started it and then came back at a later time and realized you haven't watched it and now you don't have time. This little trick 'gives' you time.

TheCapt

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Xenocide — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:46:27 EST

That's pretty lazy programming. Rest assured they will fix it very quickly lest they arise the ire of the draconian MPAA.... and stuff.

Xenocide

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Darrone — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:46:16 EST

Problem is, if you buy the another movie, u have to set it back another year, and so on, and so on....

Darrone

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

blazedshaggy — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:44:19 EST

yeah, what's the update on cracking the DRM on it and just saving the movie for foreverrrrrrr?

blazedshaggy

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

Adam Frucci — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:43:49 EST

I want to know what those playlists are named that are so secret. What are you hiding, Buchanan?

Adam Frucci

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

ripfire — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:42:15 EST

Why would you want to hold on to a movie for so long anyway? Once you watch it, just move on.

ripfire

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

musclemasterflex — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:37:12 EST

Now that its gone "public" Crapple Macintrash will issue a "fix"

musclemasterflex

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

thefastest — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:33:46 EST

has anyone tried tunebite to remove the drm and potentially let you keep the movie forever?

thefastest

Confirmed: Change Your System Time, Watch Your iTunes Rentals Forever

lafond66 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:32:46 EST

That's so funny. Most programs now-a-days (ie. 30 day product trials) don't allow for you to mess with the system clock. I guess Apple needs to learn more about windows. Just make sure you disable the system setting the clock automatically, or else it'll fix it in a few hours (the next time it syncs)

lafond66