Apple: Still a fucking nuisance, more expensive and less good than piracy.

[theweaselking]

Apple, as always, is demonstrating that only an idiot would buy from Apple and that piracy produces a by far better product, not just a cheaper one.

With that out of the way: I've got a perfectly legally purchased season of TV, in iTunes. I want to play it in a CIVILISED media player on a USEFUL location, which means stripping the DRM. There's a couple of DRM-stripping tools that have really great reviews but cost 3-5x what the TV show itself did, and their "free trial" is one minute.

What's the best *free*, or *cheap* (like, $5-10) way to strip DRM from iTunes movies so they can be played by software worth using?

(Oh, and: I'm not an American. Stripping DRM from legal purchases for personal use is completely 100% legal here. I'd do it anyway, but the fact that it's legal makes me happy.)

Comments

[skington.livejournal.com]

I assume you're using iTunes 11, but it's worth checking - some of the DRM-stripping tools only work on certain versions of iTunes.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I actually have no idea. But I'm running "many versions ago" because iTunes updates regularly install malware like Bonjour and Safari so I don't run updates from Apple, on principle. Apple hates the user and cannot ever be trusted to have the interest of their "customer" at heart.

[skington.livejournal.com]

Good grief! I know you hate Apple, and I can appreciate that iTunes on Windows may not have been the best thing that Apple ever did. But when I say "hey, mentioning the version of iTunes that you're using might help, because various flavours of DRM are differently-cracked", why not say "hey, I checked the About dialogue and it says this", given that you're asking the Internet for help?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Because I wasn't anywhere near the computer in question. Now that I'm there: iTunes 10.6

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Also: Late night, wrong computer, angry. Sorry I snapped at you, you didn't deserve it.

[glaurung-quena.livejournal.com]

Requiem (http://digiex.net/downloads/download-center-2-0/applications/11796-requiem-4-1-remove-itunes-drm-fairplay-music-video-books.html) is free. However, it hasn't been updated in a long time and does not work with current versions of Itunes. I have not used this tool myself, but it appears that it needs Itunes 10.6 or 10.7, nothing newer.

If you have a newer itunes, you'll need to deauthorize it, then completely uninstall it (including moving the itunes libary and possibly the app data folders), before installing the older version and reauthorizing. This is to ensure that the older DRM style keys that Requiem knows how to wrangle, and not the newer style ones, are present.

More info: http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/apple-and-ebooks-ibookstore-drm-and-how-to-remove-it/ (ebook specific), and http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1557577 (WRT downgrading itunes to make it work).

Good luck.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I'm running 10.6!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Requiem appears to work like a charm. Thanks!