Now that Windows 10 has gotten rid of the Windows Media Player, is it possible to buy (or rent) and watch movies on my Win10 computer?
If you were running Windows 8 prior to your upgrade to Windows 10, you wouldn’t have been able to buy movies through Windows Media Player, so I suspect you’re coming from an earlier version of Windows, though I don’t really recall being able to rent or buy movies in WMP ever. Maybe you’re confused with Apple’s iTunes and how it ties right in with the iTunes Store? In any case, the good news is that Windows 10 does indeed let you easily rent or buy movies and either stream them or download them to your computer for viewing on airplanes, in hotel rooms with bad wifi, or even while camping!
The magic all happens within the Windows Store, which has been polished a bit to make it easier to use in Windows 10, though it’s still convoluted if you haven’t previous set up a payment method.
To start, the Windows Store icon now always on your Taskbar:
Click on it and the store opens up:
See the options along the top? Click on Movies & TV to find what’s available.
With some very good timing, when I do so there’s a promo deal on the splendid movie Interstellar:
Rent and watch the sci-fi epic Interstellar for under a dollar? That’s hard to beat.
To learn more I’ll click on the advert graphic itself, leading to more info on the film:
A quick check at the bottom for resolution (HD = better but much bigger if you’re going to download the film), and language, then click on the button that matches what you’d like to do, rent or buy. For this demo, I’ll rent the film for $0.99.
Since I haven’t purchased something through the Store before, I need to pick an account and log in. Easy enough!
Once I’m signed in I’ll have the option of streaming or downloading the film.
Kind of weird to show up at this point in the process as you’ll see but if you have disk space, I definitely recommend downloading:
Choose “Next” to proceed and you’ll learn how an online movie “rental” works:
On a film like Interstellar it might be a bit tricky to find a 24hr window when you can watch the almost 3-hour epic, but the terms are pretty straightforward: you have 14 days to start watching, then 24 hours to finish.
Here you’ll also notice that I have no payment system set up. That’s why it’s showing “Add a new payment method”. No worries, click on that link and add a credit card. For what I hope are obvious reasons, I’m not going to show my own process, or my own credit card information. 🙂
Once it’s done, however, or if you already have a payment method set up, you’ll see this:
Looks good, so let’s do it! Click on Rent to proceed.
That’s nice of ’em. To proceed, launch the separate “Movies & TV” program by clicking the button and the long wait begins:
This is the first time you can see just how big the movie download is at HD quality: 8.8GB for 2hrs, 49min. That’s a lot of data!
I will hope you have a good Internet connection for this one, and that eventually you’ll see this:
Notice that the download progress bar has vanished. That’s good!
Instead, there’s a “Play” button. Yes!
Click on Play and…
Oh, sorry, kinda got into the movie for a few minutes there. 🙂
In any case, that’s the process. Quite easy and if you keep an eye out for these $0.99 deals, you can see some splendid movies on your computer or Win10 tablet (and you can make it full screen if you prefer!).
And now, I’m back to the movie…
Thank you, i have a related question. i want to buy a film for someone else to stream. Can i just email them the film link, or will they need my email and password as if it’s them?
Thanks
N
I don’t think you can just share the link because what would then stop you from posting it to a discussion group so a few hundred people could watch the film?
I selected the download option, but I would like to change that and choose streaming. How do I get back to the streaming option ?
Maybe you could have said “you can rent a DVD, put it in the computer, to watch the movie, and use VLC player, easily downloaded from the ninite.com website”? That’s what I do, with versions xp through 7, vista, 8, 8.1 – and yes even 10.
Rent a DVD? What’s a DVD, Stu? 🙂