DRM content and Airplay without internet does not work.

Question

First off I am extremely pleased with my cutover to the Apple world. Like many I have been using the "gateway" Apple products for years and have just recently purchased a new MBP.
I have just spent the better part of a day testing out what happens when you purchase a movie from the iTunes store and attempt to play it via AirPlay (ATV2) without an internet connection. It does NOT work or at least I could not make it happen. Its taking a little shine off Apple for me, and definitely something that will make me think twice before going deeper into the "Cloud."
My specific need is to have both purchased and rented movies on my shiny new MBP and stream them via AirPlay in my RV with an ATV2 that does not have an internet connection.
Before any pseudo techies chime in, here are the test cases I have used:
1. Connect my wireless router to the internet and connect the ATV2 and MBP to the router (wirelessly) everything works perfect.
2. Disable internet access to the router and cold boot both ATV2 and MBP then reconnect both to the router (wirelessly) to simulate a roadtrip in the RV.
     Result #1: movies that I have created (HandBrake copies of DVDs) work perfectly
     Result #2: movies that I have purchased via iTunes ----DO NOT WORK with AirPlay (I get an error message saying cannot connect to ATV2)
     Result #3: Digital copies that come with the Bluray for iTunes DO NOT WORK with Airplay (same message from #2)
     Result #4: If I reconnect the router back to the internet then everything works fine.
Unless I am missing something here (and please let me know) I would suspect that there is a DRM workflow here that requires home sharing to connect back to my Apple account, correct?

Answer 1

What you are experiencing is identical to my experience.  With the recent power losses in the Northeast due to Irene, we lost cable and internet connectivity.  Luckily we had a generator so that we could still watch our movie and TV library on AppleTV.  We were wrong.  While we have purchased and own many TV shows, virtually none of them were available for streaming via an iPad, iphone or any of our imacs using Airplay to a TV.  Compounding matters, it was also impossible to take a direct VGA connection from the computer where my itunes library resides, and play DRM content on our TV.  What is crazy about this, is that this is for content that we purchased...some of it several years old.
I understand Hollywood's desire to control piracy, but this is not the way to do it.  There should not be a need for an internet connection to play DRM content on the devices that have shared itunes accounts.  This would mean that if you take your AppleTV anywhere w/out an internet connection (for example on travel), you will not be able to view any content that you own that resides on your macbook or ipad (at least you will not be able to view it on a TV).