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iTunes 4.5 ...
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Posted by: Stuckeyboss

Hi Folks,

I was curious if the TiVo Desktop for the Mac 1.8 is compatible with the newly released iTunes 4.5? Has anyone taken the plunge and tested it out?

Posted by: TiVoBill

We havn't tested it internally as far as I know, but it seems to work fine from my iBook running iTunes 4.5 and TiVo Desktop for Mac 1.8.

Posted by: KermitTheFrog

ahhh... too busy testing 2.0.... i understand.. feel free to send 2.0 our way for testing :-) Us mac folk gotta stick together.

KC

Posted by: Sevenfeet

Someone should check out the new Apple Lossless encoder...given that AACs don't play on the TiVo, I doubt this new encoder is supported either.

Posted by: Dennis Wilkinson

Only MP3s are supported. You'd have to transcode other formats to MP3, and the current TiVoDesktop for Mac doesn't do that (neither does the Windows version, although it supports plug-ins that can.)

Posted by: iDriveX

What really sucks is that I bought a CD from the iTunes Music Store 4.5 and tried to use ilovemp3 to convert it to Mp3 so I could play it on my TiVo and it just produced silent tracks :( Looks like ilovemp3 is useless now. Gonna have to burn them to CD and then Reimport them.

Posted by: KermitTheFrog

If you have a program on your machine that can burn to an image file instead of to CD.. you can save yourself some time... and money.

KC

Posted by: Bigg

ii just dled iTunes 4.5 (winxp) in hope of getting the free songs. And they were trying to make me give credit card info. For a free song??? Yeah right. Well, anyway, as dumb as absurd as the idea of buying music online when there is kazzaa seems, iTunes as a media play and song organizer rocks!!! i love the rating feature and stuff like that. And how it just automatically makes it into a playlist and has nice colums for everything. Very impressive. And it works with iPod. iTunes really doesn't have anything to do with HMO though, as the music is in your shared folder or a folder like that for another p2p app. I'd have to say iTunes is very impressive though as a music player/organizer and app for the iPod to sync with. Whats with buying music online though??? I could see buying it in the store, or dling off of kazzaa. i personally sample the music from kazaa, then buy the very best in the store. Anyways, most of the stuff on kazaa is .mp3 so it works with HMO.

Posted by: Peter000

quote:
Originally posted by Bigg
as dumb as absurd as the idea of buying music online when there is kazzaa seems,[snip] Whats with buying music online though??? I could see buying it in the store, or dling off of kazzaa. i personally sample the music from kazaa, then buy the very best in the store. Anyways, most of the stuff on kazaa is .mp3 so it works with HMO.

If you "sample" music from kazaa, then buy it, why not just go to one source, "sample" and buy? Like iTunes or Napster? Napster from what I've heard will let you listen to the whole song before you buy. iTunes will only let you hear :30 but it's enough usually to get the gist. And almost every music group has a website that you can listen to some tracks for free.

Downloading copywritten music off of Kazaa is stealing, plain and simple. It's like going to the music store, shoplifting the CD then saying, "If I like it well enough, then I'll pay for it." There are plenty of other free ways to hear the music first before buying... such as in store CD sampling that almost every music store has these days. The downloading services almost always let you sample music. And there's radio stations, and internet radio (a whole lot of internet radio) that can introduce you to new sounds.

Sorry for the thread hijaak, but this issue is close to my heart. (and no I'm not part of the Music Association... I just know alot of struggling musicians who deserve more than having songs traded on Kazaa.)

Posted by: Bigg

THese artists must EARN their money, not just become rich overnight. Getting music from kazaa and stealing a cd are two different things. There was an actual cost for a company to make a cd. They paid nothing for kazaa's network, nothng for my 3000K cable connection. i learn about new artists, and am able to listen to their music in full a few times before I buy it in order to find the best. If I was not sampling on kazaa, i probably would just be listening to internet radio. This is why the music biz was booming in the dayz of free-for-all napster. And that was with a slow and expensive internet made up mostly of on-and-off dial-in connections, where today we have 3000+K cable connections with 256-384 uploads. Smart artisits plop their own mp3s into their shared folders. There was a colum in PCMag a while back that explained why napster was the perfect marketing tool for the artistis. I won't pay to download music, and i won't do PPV (if i had acces to it anyways). Call me old, even though I really am quite young, but I don't want to pay for an mp3 that i can just a s well get off kazaa in mp3, not the silly aac that nothing sees. A cd is a whole different thing as i can play it on my stereos, in my cd player, or really anywhere. Artists whp think kazaa hurts their business are DUMB. They need to realize that they should plant high quality versions of their work on kazaa, which is legal because it comes from them, and then they can sell more because of people being exposed to their music, and maybe just liking it. And if they aren't doing well, maybe its just because their music sucks, and they should get a REAL job.

Posted by: thelastvoice

quote:
Getting music from kazaa and stealing a cd are two different things. There was an actual cost for a company to make a cd. They paid nothing for kazaa's network...

But a company did pay (probably hundreds of thousands of dollars) for studio time, recording equipment, musicians, engineers and producers.

quote:
Artists who think kazaa hurts their business are DUMB.

Actually, it's the record companies that think Kazaa hurts their business. It's a very small minority of artists that became rich from cd sales.

quote:
They (artists) need to realize that they should plant high quality versions of their work on kazaa, which is legal because it comes from them

The problem is that unless you're one of a handful of superstar artists, you most likely don't own the rights to your songs. They are owned by the record company. So in most cases, it would be illegal for the artist to plant their work on Kazaa.

Rob

Posted by: mattman

"Getting music from kazaa and stealing a cd are two different things"

True, but both are still a version of theft. I'm not making a judgement on you, because I have done my fair share of p2p filesharing, so that would be the pot calling the kettle black. I just feel that people need to understand what they are doing. If you download a song from a p2p network then you are using the song without paying for it. That means you are not compensating the rights holder to the music. Whether, that is the artist or a record company is immaterial, you are taking what is not yours. Again, not a judgement, just an observation that makes it clear what is happening. If you steal the CD from a store, you are doing the same thing, but you are also stealing the physical property from the store owner, and thus their part of the profit chain. It is different, but the rights holders lose their portion of the profits either way.

Your mention of what artists should do has some valid points, but they are not required to distribute in any method you choose, just because you want it. When they don't it doesn't give anyone the right to take what is not theirs, it just becomes an excuse for those of us who don't want to give up an easy way to get music. Rationalizations don't change the facts.

Just my 2 cents plus a few more.

Matt

Posted by: Bigg

Napster helped the msuic biz bak a while ago. Kazaa could do the same if the msuic biz encouraged it. Currently I have over 350 downloads searching for a source. I am not doing anything that is aganst the interest of the artists. To h*ll with the greedy music companies.

Posted by: thelastvoice

quote:
I am not doing anything that is aganst the interest of the artists.

Unless the artist has decided that giving away his/her music for free isn't in their interest.

quote:
To h*ll with the greedy music companies.

So basically you're saying that because record companies make a lot of money selling cds (which is the whole reason they're in business, btw), it's ok to steal music from them if you don't want to pay for it?

Rob

Posted by: Bigg

I am "stealing" the artists music. iF I didn't "steal" it, I would have never listened to it. Thus, I might buy thier cd and then they make a buck a two. Its good for the artists. The reason I say "to H*ll with the greedy music companies" is because they are too stupid and arrogant to realize that killing kazaa is killing their business. And they ways they do it are not legal at all.

Posted by: iDriveX

Regardless of the Ethics involved, I just think it's pretty crappy that regardless of what format you use (Windows is using a protected WMA format, Real is developing a format or trying to get in on Apple's format, and Apple uses a protected AAC format) they can't be listened to on my TiVo. I paid $100 for this feature. I understand why Apple is making is making it so that you can't convert the song to an unprotected mp3 format, but I wish we could just decide on an industry standard so that I could listen to the music I personally bought on any number of different devices.

Posted by: rshrieve

To get back to the original question of this thread...

I just set up HMO yesterday with Tivo Desktop 1.8 for Macintosh. We are using it with iTunes 4.5 and it works just fine.

It would be nice if Tivo HMO could use the new "Party Shuffle" feature available in iTunes 4.5.

Posted by: rshrieve

Just found out that, while HMO works with iTunes 4.5, it will not play (or see) music purchased at the iTunes Music Store which are stored in MPEG-4/AAC format. It plays MP3 files in your iTunes music library just fine.

Posted by: TiVoBill

quote:
Originally posted by rshrieve
Just found out that, while HMO works with iTunes 4.5, it will not play (or see) music purchased at the iTunes Music Store which are stored in MPEG-4/AAC format. It plays MP3 files in your iTunes music library just fine.

Yes, that has always been the case. Music purchased from the Apple Music store uses a DRM scheme that only allows it to be played back in either iTunes or on an iPod.

Posted by: Austin Bike

OK, I have Windows 2000 and Tivo Desktop. How do I get iTunes to broadcast to my TiVo. I've searched everywhere and can't find the answer.

Posted by: bedelman

iTunes isn't what broadcasts the music to the TiVo. TiVo Desktop is what handles the computer side. You need to identify the location of your music folder to TiVo Desktop.

Posted by: Stuckeyboss

TiVoBill thank you for the prompt reply. I have since upgraded, and all is well :)

My take on the iTunes Music Store and it not operating with TiVo HMO:

It's time to take this battle to Apple.

It's their DRM, it's their restrictions, let's start knocking on their door. While I think TiVo 'could' have made forward progress on supporting non-protected AAC, and WMA, I can understand why they would not. I wouldn't want to explain why HMO works with these AAC files, but not those over there to my parents. It's much easier from a support standpoint to just deal with the most ubiquitous format (I'm not interested in technical discussion as JavaHMO has provided a noble proof-of-concept of what can be accomplished).

Apple NEEDS to license FairPlay, or the iTunes Music Store and the ultimately the iPod will suffer the same fate as the Mac (to quote Seinfeld - 'not that there's anything wrong with that' - I just doubt that's what they intend as business model).

Whew - well, that's my 2 cents.

Posted by: haikf

FYI, ElGato and their EyeHome product supports AAC encrypted and non encrypted files. So reading AAC from ITMS is NOT limited to iPod and iTunes. I do not understand why Tivo is not able to get the same deal as ElGato.

Posted by: TiVoBill

quote:
Originally posted by haikf
FYI, ElGato and their EyeHome product supports AAC encrypted and non encrypted files. So reading AAC from ITMS is NOT limited to iPod and iTunes. I do not understand why Tivo is not able to get the same deal as ElGato.

I'm not familiar with their product, but according to their website, they can't play the protected files:

Q: What sound formats can EyeHome play back?

A: EyeHome can play back files located in the iTunes library, namely AIFF, MPEG-1 layers 1, 2 and 3 (MP3), WAV and (unprotected) AAC files. iTunes Music Store tracks are currently not supported. This functionality will likely be added in a future software update.

http://www.elgato.com/index.php?fil...cts_eyehome_faq

I did a quick search on Google and it looks like they added unofficial support for playing protected AAC files as some point but Apple corrected that in iTunes 4.5.

Posted by: futerfas

If you want to play your iTMS music on TiVo, currently with the new version of itunes, theres 2 ways to do it.

1. Burn a cd and rip it as an mp3. This will, however, cause you to loose quality. I heard of some way to make a cd image without burning the cd, and rip it from that, but I'm not sure how it works.

2. The second way requires a mac and iMovie 4. Import your iTMS music into iMovie. Then go to file, share. Hit the quicktime button and choose compress movie for: Expert settings, and hit share. Then choose Music to AIFF. One you save it as an AIFF, it removes the DRM and you can convert it to mp3.

Posted by: Stuckeyboss

Thank you for the suggestions Futerfas, but in my opinion if you have to re-encode music than you've lost the battle. I experimented with the AAC->CD->Mp3 conversion early on, but found the artifacting to be too much.

Posted by: nathos

Scattered reports I've read, including some on http://xlr8yourmac.com state that playing iTunes Music Store files does indeed still work with iTunes 4.5 & the eyeHome.

My guess is that the eyeHome server software uses QuickTime to authorize the file & sends an unencrypted MP3 or AAC stream to the eyeHome unit. It seems that a future version of TiVo Desktop should be able to do the same (with some work of course :) )

This would, however, require a bit more CPU time on the Desktop side of things to do the transcoding in realtime. On the plus side, if the Desktop software transcodes from AAC to MP3, AAC playback support wouldn't need to be added to the TiVo Series2 units themselves, since they would just be playing MP3 streams.

C'mon TiVo....I know it'd be a fair amount of work, but the bragging rights would be pretty sweet! Plus I'd plunk down the cash for HMO on the spot :)

Posted by: TiVoBill

quote:
Originally posted by nathos
C'mon TiVo....I know it'd be a fair amount of work, but the bragging rights would be pretty sweet! Plus I'd plunk down the cash for HMO on the spot :)

Trust us.. we would love to play iTunes Music Store content on TiVo DVRs, but for now Apple doesn't want third party apps/hardware playing the songs (as iTunes 4.5 reinforces). Unlike many of the companies that offered "unofficial" support we need to do things above board. :) I actually have a large amount of music purchased from iTMS so I want it as bad as everybody else, but not going to happen unless something changes on the licensing side.

Posted by: nathos

I know...you're right. Just thinking positively :)

Even if you're technical wizards made it work, Apple probably wouldn't be too happy about you circumventing their protection scheme.

Hope it all works out someday though!

Posted by: tboydsto

quote:
Originally posted by TiVoBill
Trust us.. we would love to play iTunes Music Store content on TiVo DVRs, but for now Apple doesn't want third party apps/hardware playing the songs (as iTunes 4.5 reinforces).

This sucks TiVoBill, and is the first time I have heard the real reason why iTunes is not supported.

I would suggest that everyone goto http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html and explain to Apple the need to support TiVo.

Oye!

Posted by: bedelman

How about just support for unprotected AAC files to start? I'd love to save some disk space (AAC files are smaller than MP3 files for the same sound quality). And AAC is an "open" standard created by many of the same folks that created MP3...

Posted by: TiVoBill

quote:
Originally posted by bedelman
How about just support for unprotected AAC files to start? I'd love to save some disk space (AAC files are smaller than MP3 files for the same sound quality). And AAC is an "open" standard created by many of the same folks that created MP3...

It's certianly possible that we might support regular AAC files as some point, but I'd imagine the number of people using that format is pretty small and the potential confusion about why we can play some AAC files and not other AAC files might be too great.

Posted by: tboydsto

quote:
Originally posted by TiVoBill
It's certainly possible that we might support regular AAC files as some point, but I'd imagine the number of people using that format is pretty small and the potential confusion about why we can play some AAC files and not other AAC files might be too great.

I can understand this point. There are plenty of people who have large MP3 collections out there. I have observed that most of these people are anti-DRM, have huge libraries of downloaded music, and don't feel the need to convert the music. Hey that is great for them and TiVo has recognized that.

While there are probably some users who are jumping from MP3 to DRMed technologies, I suspect the majority of new iTunes users don't know about these issues. Heck, have you seen who Apple is targeting...the dang mini is in all the womens mags...most of these folks don't care about AAC, MP3, DRM, etc. Instead they want their stuff to work...and HMO won't in its default mode! For example, my wife gets upset that she can't play her ripped album unless I change the settings around in iTunes. I suspect that TiVo will see more of this as time goes on.

All I am saying that the situation is already confusing. In fact, it is MORE confusing for new iTunes users that AAC is not supported at all, especially when it is the default. When new users rip an album and it does not work with HMO, they are asking themselves why? Because TiVo says its too confusing to support AAC and DRMed AAC...that is nonsense! Instead, if HMO at least supported plain AAC, people would be able to play their ripped albums. When purchased music did not show up, they could then reason that it has something to do with the licensing of DRM on multiple machines.

Oh well, just a another nickle in the bucket....

Posted by: nathos

quote:
All I am saying that the situation is already confusing. In fact, it is MORE confusing for new iTunes users that AAC is not supported at all, especially when it is the default. When new users rip an album and it does not work with HMO, they are asking themselves why? Because TiVo says its too confusing to support AAC and DRMed AAC...that is nonsense! Instead, if HMO at least supported plain AAC, people would be able to play their ripped albums. When purchased music did not show up, they could then reason that it has something to do with the licensing of DRM on multiple machines.

Not to mention that re-encoding iTunes Music Store files to unencrypted AAC does sound a bit better than transcoding to MP3. I've found that attempting to move between different compressed formats creates downright lousy-sounding files :(

Posted by: Dennis Wilkinson

quote:
Originally posted by nathos
Not to mention that re-encoding iTunes Music Store files to unencrypted AAC does sound a bit better than transcoding to MP3. I've found that attempting to move between different compressed formats creates downright lousy-sounding files :(

If you're re-encoding, it's not likely to matter that you're going from (ITMS-compressed-and-DRMed) AAC to (iTunes-encoded) AAC. The uncompressed AAC audio isn't identical to the actual uncompressed audio that was encoded the first time, and you're running it through a different encoder than the purportedly-higher-quality one used by the store itself, so you're still going to introduce new artifacts.

Posted by: EricScott

tboydsto - completely agree with you. I am not a big user of the ITMS but ever since I started using iTunes, I've been ripping everything in AAC. It's really frustrating that I can't play these tracks on my Tivo. I used to use Media Center 9 (before iTunes came out) and they were able to get AAC files to play on the Tivo via their media server. I just got a new PC and don't feel like dealing with the compatability issues b/t MC9 and iTunes and prefer just having one program do all the work.

please tivo - give us support for unprotected AAC's.

Posted by: stubal

ditto

Posted by: KermitTheFrog

This is very intersting indeed.

Apple iTunes DOM SDK for Windows Released

Posted by: Kelly N.

Ok....First of all, please excuse my ignorance about all of this. I just got Tivo, and I don't know much about it yet. However, I'm interested in the music aspect of it and how mp3's are used with the service. I am a Mac person also, and I was just hoping someone could explain to me the general idea of utilizing Tivo, I Tunes, and mp3's all together (and if there are any other things I could do with them).....?

Thanks in advance for the info.!

Posted by: bedelman

You can purchase an add-on named Home Media Option (or HMO) for your TiVo. The cost is $99 for the first TiVo and $49 for each successive unit. There's a free trial currently running, so you have that available to you for now.

You will need to have both your TiVo and your computer connected to the same network to use the Music and Photos features in HMO.

You install an application on your computer (or computers) named TiVo Desktop. The application is available at http://www.tivo.com/desktop

TiVo Desktop on the Macintosh works with both iTunes and iPhoto and it makes your music and photos available to be viewed on the TiVo. You can also drag Internet radio stations in iTunes into a play list which makes them available to the TiVo as well.

TiVo Desktop by itself only supports MP3 files. If you have music encoded as AAC or have iTunes Music Store songs (which are protected AAC files), you cannot play them using HMO.

Posted by: Dennis Wilkinson

quote:
Originally posted by KermitTheFrog
This is very intersting indeed.

Apple iTunes DOM SDK for Windows Released

Interesting, but not as interesting as it would be if the article on Ars was accurate. Unfortunately, it's not.

Other media players on Windows (and media players on the Mac) can play protected AAC using QuickTime and have been able to for some time, provided they're just letting the Quicktime layer do the playing out to the sound driver and not trying to intercept the uncompressed audio samples themselves.

What this new SDK provides (from looking at the header) seems to be equivalent to the other means of control Mac OS users had over iTunes -- the AppleScript interface to iTunes. Looks to be the same set of data types and functions, just in COM and not OSA form.

In other words, it's still not sufficient to allow TiVo and others to do what they need to with protected AAC.

Posted by: iDriveX

This is how I am listening to my iTunes Music Store files on my TiVo:
(You will need a program called Hymn, Your iPod, and iTunes 4.5)

1. Buy songs from iTunes Music Store
2. Quit iTunes (iTunes cannot be open when you plug in the iPod)
3. Plug the iPod directly into the FireWire port on your computer (no other FireWire devices attached)
4. Open Hymn
5. Drag the iTMS files into the Hymn window
6. Click convert.
7. Now you have non-DRM'd AAC files
8. Open iTunes, pull in the non-DRM'd AAC files.
9. Highlight the files in iTunes, and in the Advanced Menu, click Convert to Mp3...
10. The files will convert to Mp3. Delete the AAC files in your iTunes and keep the Mp3's.

You can keep the original AACs if you want. I didn't do any sort of scientific comparison but I can't really tell the difference between an AAC file and an iTunes converted AAC to Mp3 (192 Kbps) file. I know a lot of people feel you shouldn't have to "convert" or "compress" a file you buy to use it the way you want, but that's the reality and that's how to do it.

Posted by: ruc2827

quote:
Originally posted by TiVoBill
Trust us.. we would love to play iTunes Music Store content on TiVo DVRs, but for now Apple doesn't want third party apps/hardware playing the songs (as iTunes 4.5 reinforces). Unlike many of the companies that offered "unofficial" support we need to do things above board. :) I actually have a large amount of music purchased from iTMS so I want it as bad as everybody else, but not going to happen unless something changes on the licensing side.

Sounds like a good opportunity for TiVo to partner with Apple to help them provide TivoServer functionality to stream DRM-protected and non-protected AAC files directly to the TiVo. This way, they wouldn't have to unprotect the file itself, just provide a stream of it to the TiVo. Apple and TiVo have much of the same customer base, and seem to have some synergies in digital media, and technology investments (both use Linux-based technology stacks). Seems obvious for TiVo to partner with another industry leader like Apple. Surely you guys have had talks to explore possible opportunities?

Posted by: futerfas

quote:
Originally posted by iDriveX
This is how I am listening to my iTunes Music Store files on my TiVo:
(You will need a program called Hymn, Your iPod, and iTunes 4.5)

1. Buy songs from iTunes Music Store
2. Quit iTunes (iTunes cannot be open when you plug in the iPod)
3. Plug the iPod directly into the FireWire port on your computer (no other FireWire devices attached)
4. Open Hymn
5. Drag the iTMS files into the Hymn window
6. Click convert.
7. Now you have non-DRM'd AAC files
8. Open iTunes, pull in the non-DRM'd AAC files.
9. Highlight the files in iTunes, and in the Advanced Menu, click Convert to Mp3...
10. The files will convert to Mp3. Delete the AAC files in your iTunes and keep the Mp3's.

You can keep the original AACs if you want. I didn't do any sort of scientific comparison but I can't really tell the difference between an AAC file and an iTunes converted AAC to Mp3 (192 Kbps) file. I know a lot of people feel you shouldn't have to "convert" or "compress" a file you buy to use it the way you want, but that's the reality and that's how to do it.

Thats oviously for mac. You can get it for windows, but there's no GUI interface, you have to do a compand prompt. The one advantage however, is that you don't need an iPod for windows, just mac.

Posted by: iDriveX

That's true. Sorry I live in an All Mac World and sometimes I forget there are other OSes and stuff. Sounds self centered, but work is Macs, play is Mac, Home is Mac and I post mainly on Mac Boards. And TiVo is so Apple-Like in some ways, that I forget it's not an Apple product. I guess I'm just one of those Apple apologists that loves everything Apple...

....I bought an iSight just to have one :(

Posted by: SpeedNut

It would be nice if TiVo just supported more formats than mp3, now that there's a few unencoded formats out there (AAC, Apple Lossless Encoding, Ogg Vorbis, and even WMA). If individuals are confused as to why songs they bought online don't play, that's what makes great FAQ material. :)

Posted by: KermitTheFrog

I wonder what our changes of getting an AirTunes client built into Tivo are. :-)

Air tunes doesn't decrypt AAC encrypted music. From what I Understand it re-encodes everything into Apples Lossless Codec and pushes it over the Ether to a decoder.

If AirTunes was built into the Tivo, and Tivo already has a server on the PC/Mac that can probably very easily control what iTunes is playing etc.... then perhaps AirTunes could be perfect for this application and yet NOT give the AAC Decode sceme to Tivo.

Just a thought.

KC

Posted by: ruc2827

quote:
Originally posted by KermitTheFrog
I wonder what our changes of getting an AirTunes client built into Tivo are. :-)
KC

Apple just announced their own solution for streaming any iTunes music files from a PC or Mac to your stereo, so it is highly unlikely they'll support TiVo.

Posted by: KermitTheFrog

quote:
Originally posted by ruc2827
Apple just announced their own solution for streaming any iTunes music files from a PC or Mac to your stereo, so it is highly unlikely they'll support TiVo.

You missed my point... AirTunes is just a Software loaded onto the Hardware (in that case the Airport Express)

I would fully expect that in short order we will see other AirTunes Compliant devices.

KC

Posted by: ruc2827

quote:
Originally posted by KermitTheFrog
You missed my point... AirTunes is just a Software loaded onto the Hardware (in that case the Airport Express)

I would fully expect that in short order we will see other AirTunes Compliant devices.

KC

Unfortunately as both a software and hardware vendor, Apple doesn't have much incentive to have their software run on non-Apple hardware, other than to gain a foothold into the non-PC entertainment market (which they already have a substantial foothold in ala iPod and now AirPort Express). It would be great though if what you say comes true. I'm all for it :)

Posted by: theosophe74

quote:
Originally posted by futerfas
Thats oviously for mac. You can get it for windows, but there's no GUI interface, you have to do a compand prompt. The one advantage however, is that you don't need an iPod for windows, just mac.

I was successfully able to use the command line interface to Hymn on Windows to convert a protected .m4p file that I purchased into an unprotected .m4a file. When I open that file, though, in iTunes 4.6 for Windows, I'm not given the option to convert my selection into MP3. Only AAC is listed as an option.

Am I doing something wrong, or does the 4.6 version of iTunes not support conversion to MP3?

Are there any other options for converting .m4a files into .mp3 files?

Thanks,
Mike

Posted by: futerfas

Go into iTunes prefrances, click import, and choose MP3. If that's allready selected then I believe iTunes did something in 4.6 to try to beat it again.

Posted by: theosophe74

Thanks for the info. I wasn't sure if the import format in settings was referring to the conversion format.

Thanks again,
Mike

Posted by: RadiusMan

quote:
Originally posted by iDriveX
10. The files will convert to Mp3. Delete the AAC files in your iTunes and keep the Mp3's.

I'd agree with everything you are saying except for this step 10. There's no reason to delete the AAC when you are replacing it with a worse sounding MP3. It's cool to use the MP3 for HMO, but for listening on the computer still (or on the iPod) this isn't a good idea.