Evening,

my girlfriend’s just got herself a new car with a handy USB connection ipods, memory sticks, etc. Only problem is that it cant play anything restricted by DRM, which means piles of stuff from itunes of course.

Does anyone know of a good DRM removal tool? Being free would be a bonus!

Cheers,
Mark

Just wondering… what make of car?

Itunes will convert to mp3 but you end up with a drm and mp3 version of the same song, that has worked for me in a car that won’t deal with drm, but it’s a chore and the one car we had that in, I just got a proper iPod adaptor fitted to avoid having to faff about as it’s a pain.

Anything she bought from the iTunes store before April 2009, has DRM on it. Anything bought after April 2009 has no DRM on it. Anything ripped into iTunes has no DRM on it. Anything bought before April 2009 with DRM can be dragged into a separate playlist and burned to cd/DVD and re-imported which will remove any DRM, Apple’s built-in workaround. If re-imported it’s simple to set up separate smart playlists to make it easy to keep track of what’s what, but once you’ve done it you don’t need to bother about it again as there is no DRM to worry about on later purchases.

turns out I was being a bit simple with most of the albums i was trying to use – it was a .m4a versus .mp3 problem

Although, annoyingly, I’ve just found that Elbow’s Seldom Seen Kid is protected so i’ll need to sort that one 🙁

Fiat?

I need to work out how to burn a cd of my purchase stuff so I can import them. No idea how to burn them to cd.

If it is a fiat then the ipod won’t play the purchased stuff drm or not. Can’t work that out either.

yup, a wee Fiat 500. Great fun so far, in a very butch, manly sort of way of course 😉

yeah there’s something in the manual about using ipods, seems a little strange but the memory stick works great.

Having the in-car woman read out text messages is quite good too 🙂

Get a parrot bluetooth hands free kit fitted, comes with ipod/usb/rca adaptor and unbeatable moblie hands free. will will even show the album cover on the small lcs screen,

Wondered because my car came with a cable that plugs into the USB socket and line in – and into my iPod so I can play everything the iPod can. Also gives me control of the iPod through the car’s audio, and the controls on the steering wheel.