Apple TV Gains TV Show Purchasing and Streaming in Australia, Canada, and UK

Several MacRumors readers have reported that Apple has rolled out new Apple TV support for streaming purchased television shows in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Users in those countries have been able to rent movies directly on the Apple TV, but purchased content was required to be downloaded to a computer and then streamed to the Apple TV via Home Sharing. With the new update, purchased TV shows are simply stored in iCloud and streamed directly to the Apple TV on demand.

apple tv shows australia
TV shows on Apple TV in Australia (Source: Mac Prices Australia)

Apple TV streaming of purchased TV shows came to the United States back in August. That addition was accompanied by a new TV Shows section of the purchased items listings in iTunes, allowing users easy access to download purchased shows to any device.

Besides TV show purchases, Apple had previously offered 99-cent rentals of TV episodes. Apple discontinued that offering in August, noting that customers preferred to purchase their shows and that the new iCloud flexibility offered additional benefit to purchases.

Update: It appears that the new menu option may have been released prematurely, as a number of users are reporting that the TV show option is either not functioning or has disappeared completely.

Related Roundup: Apple TV
Buyer's Guide: Apple TV (Caution)

Top Rated Comments

ipedro Avatar
162 months ago
Finally! The release of ATV2 saw the removal of the TV menu in Canada after we'd been waiting years to get it the first time. The justification was that Canada didn't get the rights to TV rentals and since the ATV2 doesn't have local storage, there was no use for the TV menu. With the death of TV rentals, it was a matter of time before the menu returned.

Nonetheless, prices are very much out of tune with the rest of the industry. You can rent unlimited tv shows on Netflix for $7.99 a month and many channels now offer their shows for free via their websites and many of them available on their apps able to be streamed to the AppleTV with AirPlay.

This has come too late for iTunes. I'd pay for a subscription to tv shows, but not $3 per episode.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GenesisST Avatar
162 months ago
Finally! No more "Is it downloaded yet?" from the wife!
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MotoMaster Avatar
162 months ago
Nothing on my Apple TV for TV shows here in Ontario, Canada.

I am disappoint Apple! :(
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
flamingkitties Avatar
162 months ago
Nothing new appeared for me in the UK. No updates available, and no change after a reset.

I'm glad it's not just me. All that excitement and nowt. BAH.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
notjustjay Avatar
162 months ago
I love avoiding the hassle of going to the video store but the price differential is too steep. Here I can rent for 1$ a disk which usually includes 4 episodes, while on apple TV it costs 3,49 per episode, that makes it 14 times more expensive :mad:

$3.49 is for an HD quality video, you can drop it to standard quality and it only costs $1.99 or $2.49 or so. Even on my 47" HDTV, standard quality looks fine.

Also, keep in mind that you're paying $1 to rent those four episodes; the ones you purchase from iTunes are yours to keep rewatching forever. Whether that's actually of any value to you is of course your own opinion.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tootall Avatar
162 months ago
I love avoiding the hassle of going to the video store but the price differential is too steep. Here I can rent for 1$ a disk which usually includes 4 episodes, while on apple TV it costs 3,49 per episode, that makes it 14 times more expensive :mad:
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iOS 18 Siri Integrated Feature

iOS 18 Rumored to Add These 10 New Features to Your iPhone

Wednesday April 24, 2024 2:05 pm PDT by
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple Silicon AI Optimized Feature Siri

Apple Releases Open Source AI Models That Run On-Device

Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
maxresdefault

Apple Announces 'Let Loose' Event on May 7 Amid Rumors of New iPads

Tuesday April 23, 2024 7:11 am PDT by
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
apple id account

Apple ID Accounts Logging Out Users and Requiring Password Reset

Saturday April 27, 2024 12:41 am PDT by
There are widespread reports of Apple users being locked out of their Apple ID overnight for no apparent reason, requiring a password reset before they can log in again. Users say the sudden inexplicable Apple ID sign-out is occurring across multiple devices. When they attempt to sign in again they are locked out of their account and asked to reset their password in order to regain access. ...
macbook pro purple february

Best Buy Introduces Record Low Prices on Apple's M3 MacBook Pro for Members

Thursday April 25, 2024 7:41 am PDT by
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
macos sonoma feature purple green

Apple's Regular Mac Base RAM Boosts Ended When Tim Cook Took Over

Friday April 26, 2024 6:34 am PDT by
Apple used to regularly increase the base memory of its Macs up until 2011, the same year Tim Cook was appointed CEO, charts posted on Mastodon by David Schaub show. Earlier this year, Schaub generated two charts: One showing the base memory capacities of Apple's all-in-one Macs from 1984 onwards, and a second depicting Apple's consumer laptop base RAM from 1999 onwards. Both charts were...