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December 6, 2008

Make your PC a multimedia powerhouse

How to make more of movies and music

Zack Stern

These days our PCs and portable devices burst with multimedia files, but our movies and music are not always as flexible and available as we'd like. PC Advisor shows you how play iTunes tracks on any device, and rip DVD movies to a media player.

How to play iTunes tracks on any device

Difficulty: Moderate
Time: 30 mins

Here's how to make music you bought via iTunes play on any media player.

This Digital Rights Management (DRM)-stripping trick could get you into legal hot water, but it gives you control over songs you rightfully own.

You'll need to use an older version of iTunes (and give up some features), because Apple regularly updates iTunes software so hackers can't remove the DRM. Search online for ‘Old iTunes 7.4.1 download' and ‘myFairTunes7 download'.

If you're already running iTunes, choose Store, Deauthorize Computer and then close the program. Temporarily rename the iTunes folder ‘iTunes Recent'. Uninstall iTunes and then restart the PC.

Install iTunes 7.4.1, myFairTunes7, Visual C++ SP1 and .Net Framework 2.0.

Restart your PC, launch iTunes, import your DRM-loaded songs and play one of them. Enter your iTunes Music Store account information when prompted to do so.

Launch myFairTunes7. Tick the boxes for ‘Preserve RAW AAC Stream' and ‘Enable No Sound Fast Dump'. If you'd like to create MP3 files instead of using the original AAC files, click that box. With the songs selected, click ‘Start Conversion'. The software will take about 15 secs for each song to remove the copy protection.

Go back to iTunes and drag the converted files from iTunes into a new folder on your desktop. The songs should now be playable on any audio device.

NEXT PAGE: how to rip DVD movies to a media player

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