Playing rental movies freezes / crashes iTunes. Someone working on a fix?

Question

.....or is this just a random error? Don't think so since there are a few more with the same problem.
I’ve been waiting for a solution to this problem since iTunes rental was started, but obviously there’s not enough “complaining“ about this error! Well here’s one more try! I hope a few more people start complaining so that this gets fixed.
When I try to play a rented movie I am asked the usual question about the 24 hour policy and as soon as I press OK, just when you think the movie will start playing, the screen turns black, or gray as described by others and our friendly beach ball appears. No sound, no picture, nothing! iTunes simply freezes forever until you force it to quit, or turn off the Mac.
After that the rented movie appears as it was never played in iTunes, the 24 hour runtime didn’t start counting, but the 30 day clock starts ticking.
There is of course one thing I observed, my MacBook gets extremely loud which would lead to increased processor activity, which I usually don’t experience except if I run many resourceful applications at once. As soon as I force iTunes to quit this is back to normal.
*Everything else, bought movies, TV shows, music, etc. works perfectly without any error or problem.*
Of course I got a refund from the iTunes store, but no indication why this problem occurred and most important how and when it will be solved.
This happened on a MacBook 2 GHz Intel Core Duo with Mac OS X 10.4.11 with updated software including iTunes 7.6 and Quicktime 7.4. But as far as I can see from other posts this is not limited to certain Hardware, because many different systems including Windows users have the same problem.
Things I have tried “inspired” by other forums:
*1. Updated and checked for new updates several times.*
*2. Completely removed Quicktime, downloaded and installed latest version from Apple.*
*3. Bought music to check if iTunes account has problems.*
*4. Different firewall settings, turned firewall off during play! Yes firewall is back on.*
*5. Monitored activity and firewall during play without any obvious problem.*
*6. Played movie with and without internet connection, cable and wifi.*
*7. Played movie with Quicktime, didn’t work error “authorization required”.*

Answer 1

I too downloaded the update to Quicktime, but it did not solve my problem. After much pulling out of the hair, I found a fix for myself. It may help someone else. This is what I had to do:
1. Make sure that movies are set to play in a seperate window (found in Edit/Preferences/Playback.
2. Open iTunes (DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PLAY THE MOVIE FROM iTUNES). Instead switch to the mini player mode (found under Advanced).
3. Open your movie folder where the rental is. The movie folder is usually found in My Documents/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Movies. Right click on the rented movie and select "Play". It will open in a regular window, but you should be able to click on the control for full screen at the bottom of the play control. I hope this helps someone else... I have tested it three times and it's worked every time.