why can't i rent hobbit hd from amazon?

gteague · 03-22-2013, 12:13 AM

jumped through all the hoops to link my tivo with amazon and selected to rent the hd version of the hobbit. FAIL with 'we apologize for the inconvenience, but this program is no longer available. see www.amazon.com/tivo for more information'. and of course there is nothing on that page of any pertinence and the damm things only been out since tuesday so what does '... no longer available' mean? useless crap. i guess they want to force me to buy just so i can watch at $19.99 instead of rent for $4.99. got news for them, for $19.99 i'm buying the blu-ray or even waiting for the extended blu-ray version which will more-than-likely be cheaper than $20.

i went to the tivo accounts page to try to find out why this happened and it says: 'down for maintenance'. could that be the reason i can't rent it? but it let me link my amazon and tivo accounts and create a pin, so i can't imagine that's the reason.

/guy

gteague · 03-22-2013, 12:21 AM

well, i answered that question by a costly mistake. i hit the right arrow at the 'buy hd version' of the hobbit expecting a screen of information and got a screen saying i'd purchased it. i had absolutely no desire to own a castrated version of the hobbit but i'd really like to know why they offered a rental copy if they weren't prepared to deliver it.

/guy

steve614 · 03-22-2013, 07:28 AM

Yeah, movie rentals are subject to availability depending on license aggreements.
It usually happens when a new movie is run on cable. HBO doesn't want you to rent the movie, they want your eyes on their channel.
Netflix also pulls DVD rentals in such cases.
This came up a lot back when Amazon VOD first appeared on TiVo.

aaronwt · 03-22-2013, 07:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gteague

well, i answered that question by a costly mistake. i hit the right arrow at the 'buy hd version' of the hobbit expecting a screen of information and got a screen saying i'd purchased it. i had absolutely no desire to own a castrated version of the hobbit but i'd really like to know why they offered a rental copy if they weren't prepared to deliver it.

/guy

How did you buy it without having to enter a PIN first?

gonzotek · 03-22-2013, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gteague

well, i answered that question by a costly mistake. i hit the right arrow at the 'buy hd version' of the hobbit expecting a screen of information and got a screen saying i'd purchased it. i had absolutely no desire to own a castrated version of the hobbit but i'd really like to know why they offered a rental copy if they weren't prepared to deliver it.

/guy

Send amazon a message that you ordered it by accident. They'll most likely refund your purchase. This link should put you on Amazon's TiVo support page, and from there on the right hand side is a "Contact Us" button that can be used to start the process.

gteague · 03-22-2013, 05:12 PM

thanks guys! @aaronwt: no, i went through all that pin setup first, so i only have myself to blame. i'm just going to write it off as a costly lesson to myself and go ahead and keep it. if i can wait until they come out with the whole hobbit extended set instead of buying them individually, i might even break even if in the future i wait until i can rent a stream instead of buying the digital copy. i do think there needs to be more transparency on which devices rentals are available and which devices require a purchase.

/guy

Bigg · 03-22-2013, 05:42 PM

Have them yank it and refund. They will, as they are very customer-centric.

Bigg · 03-22-2013, 05:44 PM

VUDU and iTunes has it for rent. I prefer VUDU for it's blu-ray quality, but both are 1080p. Idk about frame rate.

gteague · 03-22-2013, 06:03 PM

tks @bigg, i'll remember that for next time i need to rent. as you might can tell, i don't rent often since i can nearly always get things i want to watch from amazon prime free or netflix streaming.

i have an apple and a roku box, but i nearly always to try to get stuff through my tivo box if i can. i see i need to be more flexible when cases like this come up.

/guy

aaronwt · 03-23-2013, 09:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bigg

VUDU and iTunes has it for rent. I prefer VUDU for it's blu-ray quality, but both are 1080p. Idk about frame rate.

It looked pretty good on VUDU when I checked out some of it. I got a copy free when I got the 3D BD. So I just needed to enter the UV code at Flixster, then a few seconds later it popped up on my VUDU owned titles list.

Bigg · 03-23-2013, 10:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gteague

tks @bigg, i'll remember that for next time i need to rent. as you might can tell, i don't rent often since i can nearly always get things i want to watch from amazon prime free or netflix streaming.

i have an apple and a roku box, but i nearly always to try to get stuff through my tivo box if i can. i see i need to be more flexible when cases like this come up.

/guy

Yeah, I'd go for free over the quality, but if you're renting, VUDU is the way the way to go. Sound is awesome too. I rented the Hobbit on iTunes, as my VUDU was broken last night (turns out the Roku needed a reboot), and the quality wasn't nearly as good as VUDU HDX.