How to Enjoy iTunes Movies on WMP Freely

 ‘I spent most of my time in using Windows computers for work and entertainment like watching iTunes videos, however, the iTunes takes up so much memory of my computer and keep freezing often when I try to watch a video. Is it possible for me to play iTunes videos on my Windows Media Player smoothly?’ – Question from Sarah Smith

Windows Media Player is the most common player, almost all kinds of Windows computers and mobile devices come with it. It is powerful with a lot of features including media playback, library management, multiple file formats supported, disc burning, media streaming and so on. Most people use it to play videos as well as audios on their daily basis in office or at home. If you are also interested in playing media files such as iTunes movies on Windows Media Player, the following guide will show you how to easily convert iTunes M4V videos to WMP for playback in seconds.

Part 1. Compatible Video Formats for Windows Media Player

There has been multiple versions of Windows Media Player released after it first appeared in 1991. This player has intrinsic support for Windows Media codec files such as WMA, WMV, ASF, AVI etc. And more and more new file formats are added with the development of the new versions. In the most recent version of Windows Media Player 12, It supports the following listed formats.

Supported Audio Formats: MP3, MID, MIDI, RMI, AIF, AIFC, AIFF, WAV, CDA, M4A, AAC, ADT, ADTS and so on.

Supported Video Formats: ASF, WMA, WMV, WM, ASX, WAX, WVX, WPL, WMD, AVI, DVR-MS, WMD, MPG, MPEG, IVF, MOV, MP4, M4V, MP4V, 3G2, 3GP2, 3GP, 3GPP, M2TS etc.

Furthermore, for other formats which are not on the support list of Windows Media Player, you can also install a third-party codec to enable it to support more media types. For instance, you  can add more formats by using specific DirectShow filters or MediaFoundation codec. In brief, it can play any common files without any protection as long as you have the right codec installed.

Part 2. Enable iTunes Videos to be played on WMP

From what we have discussed above, we can find that M4V is already in the support list of Windows Media Player. But when we try to play the iTunes M4V files on Windows Media Player, it will still prompt you the error that ‘Windows Media Player can’t play this file, maybe the format or codec is not supported’. Why? The reason is that, though M4V is supported by WMP, the iTunes M4V is encoded with the Apple iTunes FairPlay DRM copy protection before they are sold in iTunes. Under this protection, the iTunes movie files can only be played on selected players and devices from Apple like Apple TV, iOS devices, iTunes player, etc. In order to play the protected iTunes videos on other players like Windows Media Player, you must remove the DRM restriction at the first place. Thankfully nowadays you can crack DRM with little effort using a powerful iTunes DRM video converter called DRmare iTunes M4V to WMP Converter. It is developed with stunning features to remove DRM, convert iTunes M4V videos etc. You only need to load your downloaded iTunes videos to the converter and the DRM will be removed automatically once the process is done.

Part 3. Remove DRM and Convert iTunes Videos to WMP

It seems very easy to convert iTunes movies and TV shows to WMP with DRmare, right? If you haven’t use the software yet, you can download the free trial version to evaluate it yourself. Following is the step by step tutorial.

Step 1Load iTunes DRM M4V videos to DRmare

It is a piece of cake to import iTunes DRM M4V files, please just drag and drop the video files from iTunes library to the DRmare software screen. Sometimes if you fail to load the files, maybe the files are not downloaded completely. Please just make sure the iTunes purchased or rental videos are downloaded and authorized to play on the current computer before converting them.

Step 2Customize output format for Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player supports almost any formats, so you can select any formats you want theoretically to convert videos and remove DRM. But I’d suggest you to choose MP4(Lossless) since it can keep the original quality including the original subtitles, audio tracks. Based on your requirements, you might do some settings on the output video parameters such as the bit rate, frame rate too.

Step 3Start to convert iTunes M4V videos

Next, you can press the ‘Conversion’ button at the bottom right side of the software to convert your iTunes videos. Please don’t open other programs on your computer to make sure it runs fastest and most smoothly. 

It is done! Congratulations, you don’t need iTunes player to play iTunes movies now, simply go to the converted folder to locate the video you have converted and you can right click on it and choose to open with Windows Media Player. You don’t need to worry about the computer freezes any more.