How to Use WD TV Live to Manage and Stream iTunes Videos

 

“My videos are saved on different devices and it is really hard for me to navigate to find the videos to play every time. I have been seeking a way to manage my videos and stream them for a long time but to no avail. Anyone be kind enough to inform me a good solution?” – Asked by Thomas

No worries. This is where a set-top box WD HD TV come into play. As a powerful consumer device for home entertainment, WD TV Live can not only play online content via lots of built-in video apps, but also supports to play different file formats including some of the premium DRM contents such as Spotify music on the local network. However, some other DRM files, like iTunes videos are not counted on the list. It offers an ideal solution for you to management all your videos including iTunes files. If you are iTunes fans and want to stream iTunes movies on WD TV, you can follow this post to find a simple work-around to play iTunes videos on WD TV Live.

Part 1. Brief Introduction to WD TV Live

Before we move to a good solution, we’d get a deeper understanding of WD TV.

Models: There are multiple models released since its first debut in 2008 including WD TV(1st Gen, 2nd Gen), WD TV Mini, WD TV Live(Plus, Hub, Streaming), WD TV Play, WD TV Media Player. The new models are built with higher performance hardware and more new features.

Streaming apps: The previous WD TV doesn’t support to stream videos, musics etc. from internet. Western Digital company starts to add this feature on the WD TV Live in 2009. Generally the streaming apps supported are Facebook, Spotify, Flingo, Blockbuster, Hulu Plus, YouTube, Pandora, Mediafly, Funspot.

Formats: WD TV supports video, photo, music files like MP4, MOV, MPG, MPEG, H.264, TS, JPEG, GIF, MP3, FLAC, MKA, OGG, DTS, Dolby Digital, etc.

Part 2. Quick Way to Play iTunes Videos with WD TV Live

From the format list of WDTV, we can find that iTunes M4V format doesn’t exist there. So obviously it is not supported by WD TV Live. What’s worse, besides the format, iTunes M4V videos are strictly protected by the FairPlay DRM scheme. As we know, Apple doesn’t license other non-Apple apps to play iTunes video episodes except the Quicktime, iTunes, etc. This makes it even impossible for other third party devices like WD TV to play iTunes videos directly.

However, there’s still possibility to watch iTunes movies on WD TV. In this case, all you’ll need is to delete the DRM protection from your iTunes movies or TV shows and convert them to a user-friendly format to manage and play on your WD TV Live. Things become easier with the professional iTunes DRM converting tool DRmare M4V Converter for Windows/Mac. It supports to bypass DRM restriction and convert iTunes M4V videos to MP4, MOV, MKV and a lot more in a 30X faster speed. After all, the iTunes videos will be DRM-free and playable anywhere, such as WD TV Live.

Part 3.  Convert iTunes M4V Videos to WD TV Live with Ease

Now let’s get started to remove DRM from iTunes videos by DRmare iTunes M4V Converter. Please make sure you have downloaded and installed the right free trial version on your computer so that you can follow the steps below.

Step 1Load iTunes DRM M4V videosWhen you launch the DRmare software, iTunes will start automatically. If you have already downloaded videos on your iTunes, you can simply drag and drop them to the DRmare iTunes M4V to WD TV Converter to import easily or you can click the ‘+’ icon to pick up the iTunes M4V videos.

Step 2Define output format for WD TVAs we know, WD TV Live can play multiple videos from local network directly, so in generally you have multiple options to choose the output format. The one I will highly recommended is MP4 which is a widely supported format. Furthermore, it supports to keep 100% original quality like the subtitle, audio track and so on when converting iTunes videos.

Step 3Convert iTunes M4V for WD TV LiveFinally, you can click the ‘Convert’ button at the lower right to start the converting process. DRmare iTunes M4V to WD TV Converter will start to remove the DRM encryption info from your iTunes videos and then export them to new video formats smoothly.

Now you have already removed DRM from your iTunes videos.  You can put them on an external hard drive which is connected on the same network, then your Apple TV should be able to locate the videos and stream them to play without any troubles.