Android Movie Rentals
Google has a video rental service attached to the new Android Market. You can rent movies through the Market and watch them on the Web, your phone, your tablet, or even hook up your tablet to your TV using your tablet’s HDMI connections.
This market lets you purchase movies just as you purchase apps or books.
At the time of writing, the Android Market is available on several tablets, and Google is adding more. In order to play those movies on your tablet, you must have the Videos app from Google installed.
This app allows you to play both rented videos and personal videos you own. Rented videos can be downloaded to your device for offline playing, but they are copy protected and will expire when the rental period is over. The Video app is only available on tablets with an upgraded Android Market.
Rental Period
The rental period for most movies is 30 days to start watching the movie and 24 hours to finish a video you have started watching.
That gives you enough time to download a few movies for an airplane or road trip somewhere, and it gives you time to watch any movies you didn’t get around to starting on the way up. The 24-hour grace period also gives you time to find a better Internet connection or download a movie if you start watching it and find that your connection is too slow.
That said, 24 hours is 24 hours, so be sure to check the terms of a movie before you start renting, and be careful not to start playing a movie before you’re ready to watch it.
The terms and conditions of a movie are shown during the first stage of the check-out process. Figure 19–2 shows a movie being purchased from Android Market on the Web.
Figure 19–2. The Android Market’s terms and conditions for a movie rental
Downloading (Pinning) Movies
As mentioned earlier, you can download rented movies to your tablet, so you don’t have to rely on Internet access for viewing. Downloading movies through the Android market is called pinning the movie.
NOTE: When you pin a movie to your tablet, it’s not available for streaming or viewing from other devices like a phone or desktop computer. It’s pinned explicitly to the device you downloaded it to.
Follow these steps to download a movie from the Android Market app on your tablet (not the Android Market website):
- Tap a movie you’ve rented to see that movie’s information page. This is similar to the information page you’d see on an app.
- On the right side of the screen, you’ll see two buttons: Play and Download. Tap the Download button; this will launch the Videos app and pin your video.
- From the Videos app, tap the Menu button on the upper-right corner of the screen.
- Tap Manage Offline Rentals.
- Tap the Pin button (it is literally shaped like a pin).
- Tap the Done button on the lower=right corner of the screen. Your movie will start downloading.
NOTE: Movies are big files, and they’ll generally take about 90 minutes to download. If you plan on watching a movie on an airplane trip, make sure you set aside time to download it well before you leave.