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Purchased movies get error "This movie could not be played"

I'm trying out my new 3G 64GB iPad and noticed that my purchased movies (Star Trek in HD and UP in SD) both get the error "This movie could not be played". The movie does come up to show a single frame, then stops and gives the error. Some free movies and TV shows appear to be working fine. Any thoughts why these movies won't play?

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on May 5, 2010 12:27 PM

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7 replies

May 13, 2010 12:21 PM in response to jwrightstudio

720p is the highest HD it can play. Here are the specs:

H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format

May 16, 2010 6:05 AM in response to capkirk

Thanks for the reply. So I finally got Star Trek to play (keep in mind it was purchased from Apple) by setting the 'default' from HD to SD in iTunes. Is that really needed? Shouldn't Apple's software be smart enough to sync the right movie to play on the iPad?

The SD version of 'UP' (purchased on iTunes), still gets the error 'this movie can't be played'.

Nov 2, 2010 5:56 PM in response to jwrightstudio

I was having exactly the same issue when I tried to play movies bought through iTunes on my MacBook Pro which were transferred to my iPhone 3GS. However, I noticed that the only movies that would give me the error 'This movie cannot be played.' were the movies that I'd previously played in surround sound on my MacBook.
So I deleted the movie from my iPhone, went back to iTunes on my laptop, played the movie for a few seconds as I changed the sound setting back to 'stereo', then transferred it back to my iPhone - and the movie played back perfectly!
I hope this helps somehow. 🙂

Purchased movies get error "This movie could not be played"

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