MacBook – A purchased and downloaded iTunes television show will not play

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A heads up – I am a complete layman with absolutely no knowledge of operating system or hardware stuff aside from the fact that I have no knowledge of it. Any answers that are given I would prefer to be in simple, nontechnical English.

Here is my quarry: I have purchased a season pass for Gotham on iTunes and have downloaded the newest episode. Upon completion of the download, I pressed the play button. The screen was completely black, there was no audio, the progress bar wasn't moving and the show was registered as playing. I have no idea what version of the apple operating system I am using and the only knowledge I have of the hardware is that it is a MacBook Air that is at least two years old.

I have already tried several things in an attempt to get it to work, to no avail. They are, in order of when I tried them:

  • Uninstalling and reinstalling the show
  • Closing and reopening the iTunes application
  • Turning off and back on my laptop
  • Unauthorizing and reauthorizing my computer
  • Waiting it out for twelve hours

Nothing I have done has in any way altered the problem which presents itself when I try to watch the show. I have no problems watching videos on YouTube; it is simply shows purchased via iTunes which refuse to work properly. This problem has not occurred prior to today, though when I tried to watch a different show (I forget off the top of my head which one I clicked) that didn't work either.

Since I posted this 24 hours ago I have managed to successfully use iTunes to play music. I downloaded Star Wars episode I and tried watching that, but alas, movies do not work either. The 30-second bit that plays as a trailer for the new episode of a television show, however, did manage to play succesfully after a minute of there being a black screen like what I described, leading me to maybe suspect that this is a buffering problem.

Best Answer

I opened the App Store and found iTunes update to version 12.6.1. Ran the update and now my TV shows are playing. Hope this works for you as well.