Movie Rentals Won't Play on Late-Model iPods?


If you have a pre-September 2007 iPod, you are So Outta Luck, according to a story at Wired.

The issue has emerged on Apple's own message boards with iPod owners finding downloaded movies won't play even on 5G iPods purchased before September '07. Only 6G iPods and recently-upgraded Nanos and Touch can play the movie rentals, it appears.

It doesn't appear that there are any physical hardware limitations that would prevent earlier-generation iPods from playing the movies, but no firmware update to add support has been announced. Some have pointed to possible DRM issues relating to the 5G iPods' analog video output, versus the 6G's digital. This could make (imperfect) copies possible by outputting video from a 5G iPod to a recording device, like a DVR. New features have recently been added to iPhones, via a free firmware update, although Touch users had to pay $20 for the privilege.

Meanwhile, Apple is locking out tens of millions of potential movie renters by denying them compatibility. Perhaps the movie studios locked them into it. It's not like Apple to look askance at a revenue stream.