Sunday, May 22, 2011

Android and Me

Android and Me

Root access equals no access to Android Market movie rentals

Posted: 22 May 2011 01:44 PM PDT

While we haven’t seen any in the wild reports of this issue yet the guys at Android Central were tipped to an interesting bit of information in Google’s own help documents regarding the newly minted movie rental service in the Android Market.

You’ll receive this “Error 49″ message if you attempt to play a movie on a rooted device. Rooted devices are currently unsupported due to requirements related to copyright protection.Android Market Help

With the limited number of Android devices (only the 3.1 updated Xoom) currently supported by the service it is not terribly surprising that we haven’t heard more of a hue and cry about this limitation yet, but with support for all devices running Android 2.2 and above coming very soon this is about to be brought front and center for a significant portion of the Android enthusiast population.

While I can certainly see content providers making this request of Google it is disappointing to say the least, particularly since it isn’t a restriction that seems to be present for some of the other high profile streaming services we have seen of late such as Netflix [1] or HBO Go.

Now chances are this will be rendered a non-issue in short order as I can’t help but think that at least some members of the root community will take this as a challenge, but where do you stand on Google acquiescing to these terms in the first place?

References

  1. Not that they are the paragon of successful streaming implementation with their official support for only five devices. ↩

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