AARGH! DRM, Windows Media 9 and Pocket PC 2003

[popabawa]

I had my first experience of legally downloading music last night and guess what? I'm having problems and I'm totally cheesed off!

I bought one album and two singles, checked the DRM for transferring to Pocket PC (iPAQ 2210) and found they had unlimited transfer's to a mobile device. Very good.

Downloaded to my PC. Very good, listened to the two singles and decided to transfer the album to my Pocket PC so I could listen on my way to work this morning.

Stuck my CF card into the reader, it was recognised my WM9 and commenced transfer. Every file refused to copy with the helpful message - 'an error has occured'. Went back on-line to check the DRM for this album, yes, unlimited transfers to a mobile device allowed. Hmmm...

Wondering if it was the CF card that was causing it to fall over, I tried transferring the two singles over using WM9 and the CF card in the reader. Worked perfectly and played on WMP on the Pocket PC. Strange...

Deleted the files off the CF card and tried the album again, nope, same as before.

Tried the two singles again, they transferred fine. THIS time though, they refuse to play on the Pocket PC with the message "The license for this file is not valid. Use Windows Media Player on your PC to copy the file to your device again". Tried it again, same result. At this point I gave up.

Having extensively searched the net this morning, I can't see there's anything obvious wrong (or that I'm doing wrong).

I'm a tech-savvy guy but I can't get my music to play on my Pocket PC.

Anyone else experiencing anything like this? It really, really sucks.

Iain.

[Brad Adrian]

Where did you download the music from? Maybe what the "unlimited" comment was referring to was direct downloading to a device or somehow meaning only digital jukeboxes.

[Jason Patterson]

This problem relates to the fact that CF cards don't have serial numbers embedded in them, that the DRM license can be 'attached' to.

Insert the CF card into the Pocket PC, and use WMP to copy the files to the Pocket PC, instead of copying them to your card reader. When you select 'Pocket PC' in WMP's Copy Music wizard, it will pull up a folder list, where you can select the storage card for the destination. That should work!

[popabawa]

Thanks for the reply's.

I did think of trying to copy whilst connected but the problem there is that but I sync via WiFi and WMP won't recognise the device is connected.

Guess I'll have to invest in a sync cable but then I'm faced with the problem of super-slow (compared to USB2.0 compact flash reader speeds anyway) transfers to my PPC.

I'm still wondering why it worked at all though.... It all seems a tad random. The available possibilites to copy TO from WMP seem limited but offer the compact flash reader when a card is inserted. It really looks like it should work.

Iain.

[popabawa]

Where did you download the music from? Maybe what the "unlimited" comment was referring to was direct downloading to a device or somehow meaning only digital jukeboxes.

Brad, I downloaded it from the official Microsoft Music site.

Before I bought, I clicked through from there to see all supported 'portable' devices on the Microsoft site, and yes, Pocket PC 2003 is on the list.

Regards, Iain.

[popabawa]

Right, tried transferring the files with my Pocket PC connected with a USB sync cable.

WMP recognised the device as being connected and tried again...

Mixed success, the two singles transferred across OK, but only one plays correctly, the other plays for about 3 seconds and stops.

Again, the album files refuse to copy over at all.

This really sucks :evil:

Next step to see what their technical support can suggest.

Iain.

[RenesisX]

Mixed success, the two singles transferred across OK, but only one plays correctly, the other plays for about 3 seconds and stops.

This is much more likely to be a Windows Media Player problem than an OD2 problem. Does the track that doesn't play properly on your PPC play fine on your PC?

I've not transferred DRM stuff to a Pocket PC for a couple of years so I just grabbed a track from an OD2 store and transferred it. The whole thing was flawless for me..

> Chaz <

[popabawa]

This is much more likely to be a Windows Media Player problem than an OD2 problem. Does the track that doesn't play properly on your PPC play fine on your PC?

Plays perfectly on the PC (as do all the other tracks).

Still stumped and no response from the technical support team.

Iain.