On the back of some rave reviews, I rented Madras Cafe from the iTunes store. Another matter altogether the movie didn't quite live up to expectations. But that isn't the point. For the first time, I encountered an error while trying to play a movie purchased from the store. For the life of me, I couldn't get what in the devil's name was going on. Looked up possible reasons, and discovered furious iTunes users complaining on various forums.

One of the ways, I read, to get around the problem deauthorize my Mac from the iTunes store and authorize it again. Tried it. Didn't work for me. The HDCP error persisted. But I could see the movie downloading in the HD format I had paid for. Apple forums had no answer to the question. This was one of those times when I cursed myself for being a Mac Fanboy. 

When things don't work is when you feel maniacally compelled to make it work. I looked up Youtube and found an HD version of the movie. Because it is free, the movie is ad interrupted. But that's par for course and I'm willing to live with it. As someone who makes a living out of creating content, I think a content producer ought to be compensated one way or the other. There, I digress again.

Plugged my earphones and hit the play button. For some strange reason, the sound was awfully low and I couldn't turn it up. Looked around and I came across a neat little hack on VLC, my favorite media player that allowed me boost the sound and stripped all ad breaks out of the stream as well. I still haven't figured how it works. Would appreciate any clues.

How to go about it? Just do what see in the screenshot below. Open VLC -> File -> Open Network -> Copy paste Youtube URL -> Click Open. Enjoy!

After having done all of this, I shut my machine down. Next day, when I open it, a pop up on screen informed the movie is ready for viewing. It played flawlessly. I'm stumped.