iTunes Movie Rentals vs. Purchases: What's the Difference

iTunes, as one of the largest online media stores in the world, is providing us with a huge selection of blockbusters, hot musics, popular TV series in superior quality and reasonable prices. If you are a regular iTunes user who like to download movies or TV shows from iTunes Store, you should know that iTunes offers video files for both sale and rent. That is to say, you can choose to either purchase or rent a movie each time when you decide to get it from iTunes. Then here comes the problem - should you rent it or buy it? That's contradictory because you may regret for buying a movie and find you don't really like it at all or you may regret for renting a movie and find you like it so much that you want to buy it.

So if you are unclear with the differences between iTunes rentals and purchases yet, you can take a look at the following comparison between iTunes movie rental and purchase services from different parts, including the time of validity, price, movie quality, and general restrictions. Besides that, we are providing you an ultimate solution to solve your hesitation and worries for good when renting or buying movies from iTunes.

iTunes Rentals vs. Purchases: Time of Validity

According to Apple's official declaration, movies rented 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 And once it expires, the film will be automatically withdrawn by iTunes and disappear from your hard drive forever unless you rent it again.

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.

iTunes Rentals vs. Purchases: 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 on renting movies or TV shows on iTunes Store usually ranges from $4.99 to $5.99, while purchasing the movies will cost more, for example, from $9.99 to $14.99.

At this point, you may begin to wonder whether the video quality of iTunes rentals is lower than the purchases due to the different prices. Actually you don't need to worry about it since 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.

iTunes Rentals vs. Purchases: General Restrictions

Leaving out the differences in price and time of validity, movies rented or purchased from iTunes also have something in common, for example - the general restrictions to play it on up to five devices, like your laptop and desktop computer or portable gadgets, like iPhone or iPad. This is because all movies, including rentals and purchases, in iTunes Store are locked by Apple's FairPlay DRM decryption. In other words, you are not allowed to transfer any iTunes rentals and purchases to Android or other non-Apple devices for playback.

Turn iTunes Movie Rentals to Purchases? No Problem!

Even provided with those specific differences and commons, it's still no easy to decide whether to buy or rent a movie in iTunes. Won't it be great if there is only one option or if we turn iTunes movie rentals into purchases? Maybe we can work some magic here and get us the ability to convert iTunes rentals into purchases so that we cease the debating between rentals and purchases?

Here we would like to introduce ViWizard iTunes DRM Removal tools to help you bypass DRM protection from iTunes movie rentals and purchases thus to convert the DRM movies to common formats for playing on various devices with original high quality preserved. This iTunes DRM Video Converter comes with two versions - ViWizard iTunes DRM Remover for Mac and ViWizard iTunes DRM Media Converter for Windows. With both iTunes DRM removal tools, you are able to enjoy any iTunes rentals as the same like purchases without worrying they will expire and watch them on as many devices as you like.

Dave Henry is a long-time ViWizarder who loves all technological things. In his free time, he likes reading about science and technology, writing for his blog, watching sci-fi films, and meditating.