WMA Problems

M

mw84

Registered
Hey, I just finished downloading a Basement Jaxx album. The files are all in .wma format from www.woolworths.co.uk but whenever I try to play them all I get is this message in firefox:


In order to play this file, you need to upgrade your media player to a version compatible with Windows Media Rights Manager V7. Select View Compatible Players below to see a list of compatible media players.

If your current media player does not have a Windows Media Rights Manager V7 compatible version, you should select a different player with the Windows Media Rights Manager V7 identifier.


Does anyone know how to resolve this? Thanks for any help
 
As far as I know, protected WMA files are not playable on the Macintosh platform. The files you downloaded are DRM-protected, so you'll need a PC running a version of Windows Media Player that supports DRM-protected WMA files.

I believe that only Windows Media Player 9 for Windows can play those files -- there may be other programs that can as well, but I'm pretty sure they're all for Windows, not Macintosh.

Try downloading the latest version of Windows Media Player for Macintosh from http://www.mactopia.com -- if that doesn't work, then those files may be useless on your Mac.
 
No luck, it cost nearly £10 for the album too necause itunes doesn't have it yet. Is there no way to burn it straight to a cd or will it not play on a cd player either?

EDIT: or in virtual pc?
 
VirtualPC may work, as long as you've got a current release of Windows Media Player. You should be able to burn a CD of the files, but it may be tough since VirtualPC has limited hardware support (ie, it's not able to get direct access to Macintosh hardware, like CD burners). It may or may not work...

Got a friend with a PC? ;)
 
did you try opening with quicktime, usualy works but might not. if that dosent work burn the files to cd with itunes and and then re-import them, this has worked for me on several occasions. another solution would be to find a file converter and convert to a format that is more mac friendly.
 
woolworth are really smug about the whole wma thing and they have a page stating all the benefits of wma and microsoft media player. You should write them a really angry letter asking them to give you your money back since they didnt state that you needed a windows pc. You would easely win such a fight, cuz they go on and on about that you need at least windows media player 7.1 but dont write clearly that you need the _windows_ version of that application (the macversion is also called windows media player). Fight them!
 
Viro said:
Any one know why MS releases Windows Media Player for OS X *without* DRM support?
Click to expand...

I think it has do with the Windows DRM is written to use some kind of program (that runs in the background) and is a Windows program only.
 
dedhedtek said:
did you try opening with quicktime, usualy works but might not. if that dosent work burn the files to cd with itunes and and then re-import them, this has worked for me on several occasions. another solution would be to find a file converter and convert to a format that is more mac friendly.
Click to expand...

QuickTime won't open a DRM-protected WMA file, and neither will iTunes. Any freeware/shareware/commercial converter won't be able to do it either, without a crack for the DRM, which is illegal.

I think he's stuck finding a Windows computer or Windows emulation to do anything with those files... :(

I would send an email to Woolworths asking them about their Macintosh compatibility. My guess is that they'd say it's not compatible with Macintosh and try to steer you toward a Windows computer, but you never know. I searched their site for over 10 minutes and couldn't find a thing about what computers are compatible with their service. They do say in one section that Windows Media Player 7.1 is compatible with their tunes, but 9 or 10 is recommended. Since there is a Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X, that statement would lead me to believe that WMP 9 for Mac would work with their files.

mw84: Have you tried downloading the files to your computer, then playing them with WMP 9? What error does it give when you try with WMP for Mac?
 
No error, just the same message opening up in firefox. On the list of compaitble players it suggest on a link in that message it has winamp but when i tried the mac winamp (I could only find a really old version for macs) I dont get the message but nothing else at all happens either.
 
The way WinAmp plays protected WMA files on PCs is to just act like Windows media player for a while.

As such, the Mac version won't help you one iota.

You're SOL, apparently, unless you're willing to either burn them to a disc and re-encode them (if you re-rip into anything except Apple Lossless, the audio quality will degrade further since you're transcoding between two lossy compression formats), or, in VirtualPC, burn them somehow to an image (ISO), and burn the image with Disk Utility in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.

Either way, I strongly suggest that you don't support WMA-based stores, since Microsoft has clearly not enabled playing of DRM encoded files on Macs.
 
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