http://www.digitaltheatre.com/production/details/noel-coward-private-lives#.VEviJ1yj8io
I watched Private Lives on Digital Theatre (DT) for free from the email they sent. When you rent a show you have thirty days to activate it. After you activate it you have 48 hours to watch it. After a few glitches I was able to watch it on my big screen TV. I have my laptop connected to my TV with an HDMI cable.
DT had put Private Lives in my Library. I had downloaded the DT player on my computer and laptop. When I first tried to watch it by opening the player and clicking on Private Lives it looked like it was loading. However, it stayed on that screen and never loaded. When I went to DT homepage to try and figure out what I was doing wrong it showed I was not logged in. Once I logged in and went back to the player it worked right away. It would have been less confusing if instead of an icon showing the program was loading it said You must log in to access this feature or something similar. I was able to go back and forth between my computer and my laptop and see the show, if anyone is interested in being able to do that.
I am curious to know if anyone else has watched a show on DT. Like many others I am impatiently awaiting the release of The Crucible. My biggest concern after watching Private Lives is the sound. I know I missed a great deal of dialogue because I couldn’t hear. In this particular show there is quite a bit of rapid fire dialogue so that could be a contributing factor. When writing this post I came across an interesting article:
http://www.digitaltheatre.com/news/details/captioned-productions-coming-soon-to-digital-theatre
It was posted Aug 14, 2014. I am hoping they offer this feature for The Crucible but I guess we won’t know until it is released. If I had known about this feature I would have ordered one of the shows with closed captioning.
I would be very interested in hearing the experiences of other people. I hope I have shed some light for those who haven’t tried Digital Theatre.
Tree 
Reblogged this on Me + Richard Armitage and commented:
Trying out Digital Theatre.
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Reblogged this on FunkyBlueDandelion and commented:
For anyone waiting to watch THE CRUCIBLE via the download from Digital Theatre, RichardTreehouse has some practical tips. Thanks for the head’s up, Tree!
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I watched All My Sons and Much Ado About Nothing as DT rentals. i experienced one “glitch” the first time, which is that to start the film, you don;t actually click the screen with the start arrow, but rather, the small icon with the “cover.” Once I figured that out, my experience was flawless. I, too watched it on my TV with an HDMI cable hook-up.
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I should probably add that I generally watch TV with closed captioning. I find I miss things if I don’t. Having said that, it is sometimes funny what the closed captions say. Literally not even close to what was actually said 😉
The sound is probably fine for the average user. Unfortunately the older I get the less I hear.
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I watched Much Ado About Nothing (DT rentals). I had downloaded the DT player. I watched it on my laptop and it worked perfectly. No problems with picture or sound.
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I’ve purchased Private Lives and Much Ado About Nothing, watching both on the TV via cable from my laptop. For the free rental I chose All My Sons, but the buffering every twenty seconds or so was very frustrating – my lack of patience with it meant that I didn’t get it finished before my 48 hours were up.
I had the same problem as you when I first started, not realising that I had to log in to the player, just as I would my account on Digital Theatre’s website.
I discovered too, when my first download of the player didn’t work properly (never found out why) that uninstalling it to install again, deleted the production I had already purchased and downloaded. You get three downloads for your purchase, so this then left me with two.
It’s definitely paid off for me to have everything sorted and had the practice runs before The Crucible is released. I’m all set! 🙂
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Thanks! That is good to know about the downloads. I have only watched the free rental. I agree that I’m very happy I had a practice run before The Crucible is released. I may even buy one to try that. Did you enjoy Much Ado About Nothing?
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Yes, I enjoyed Much Ado About Nothing very much. I’m not a big fan of Shakespeare, but I don’t mind his comedies.
I also found Digital Theatre’s customer support excellent. I had a quick helpful response to my initial query about the player download failure, but didn’t need further help because I chose to reinstall it. With each purchase I have received a discount for my next one which is worthwhile making use of.
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This is indeed very helpful, Tree. Thank you for this. Unfortunately I was not quick enough to download a trial recording, and I have heard from a couple of people that the process may not be as straight-forward as it looks… So reading your helpful hints is really welcome.
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I had trouble downloading Much Ado About Nothing as my free rental. I decided a few days later to rent it and it took a long time to down load but once I had it I had no trouble viewing it. I was using my iPad mini with Apple TV to watch it as I have no laptop or PC. My only complaint was that the closed captioning was not showing on the tv but instead was showing up on the iPad. That made it difficult to read the captioning on the iPad while watching the play on the tv. Other than that I did enjoy it and the sound was good. I am going to check with DT regarding captioning for The Crucible. Maybe I missed something in setting up captioning on this rental. I am glad that I did do a trial run with another play though. I feel a little more confidant now using their site.
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Thanks for sharing your experience and especially about the captioning. I do hope they offer it and that it works correctly for The Crucible. When I went in to rent Much Ado About Nothing this afternoon it didn’t say anything about captioning. Are you made aware of it after you pay? Thanks!
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I have bought three plays (their catalogue is simply irrisistible to me): Private Lives, Henry IV part I and Henry IV part II. There are some problems when using a pc with XP as OS but they explain in their website that the OS required are from Windows Vista on. But, nevertheless, most of times work perfectly.
Their customer care center is very efficient; they gave me a 25% voucher after the second purchase but it didn’t work for the third. They replied me within 24 hours and told me that I will be refunded. Therefore I will be able to use it for TC.
Regarding captioning, the plays I’ve bought had not that issue (or I’m so clumsy that I’ve not found it), but screenshots work; with other online players you can only capture a black screen.
I find that three downloads are very few. I’ve made a test, to copy one of the plays from the library of my “first” pc and paste it in the library of the second. The play cannot be watched 😦 Even if the login and password of both players is the same! Such a pity. I guess that in ten years’ time if I have not found the way to convert those files in a format that can be read by another media player the plays would be definitely lost, as the plays are available for a definite period of time. For instance I just have now one more download of “Private lives” available, and as you know, laptops, pc or pads do not have a very long “life”.
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Thanks for sharing your experience! I had a good experience with DT customer care as well. I initially had a problem getting my free rental and when I contacted them they promptly put it in my library.
I know Private Lives didn’t offer captioning and I just checked and neither did the Henry’s. You didn’t miss anything!
It’s interesting because the rental could be played on my desktop and my laptop. It seems that I do need to purchase a play and see how that works. I would not be happy if I purchased the play and then lost it due to a computer malfunction. Did you try an external hard drive? I move that between computers all of the time. It seems that the “life” of computers keeps getting shorter and shorter 🙂
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As far as download is concerned they always talk in the support page about computers or devices; I guess that the player has to connect to internet to verify the license. Once the play is succesfully downloaded in the player you don’t need internet anymore, it works also off line, but you must download it in each device to work, no files transferred allowed 😦
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