How to Play DRM Protected M4V Videos?

Why it's DRM Protected?

M4V video format is a kind of container format developed and used by Apple in its iTunes store. All iTunes videos, such as iTunes movies, TV show episodes and music videos are encoded with M4V format. To protect the copyright of the iTunes digital content, Apple add Fairplay DRM protection in these M4V videos. Even though we purchase or rent iTunes M4V videos from iTunes store, we don't really own these content. Apple even prevent us to accessing the purchased or rented iTunes M4V videos freely. We can only play the iTunes M4V videos with Apple's products only, like iTunes, Quicktime, iPhone, iPod, iPad and Apple TV.

In this article, we will introduce how to play DRM protected M4V videoson computer with various media players.

Play DRM Protected M4V Videos With iTunes and Quicktime

As we know, iTunes DRM protected M4V videos can be played with Apple's products well. So we can play the iTunes download M4V videos with iTunes and Quicktime Media player freely.

iTunes: Launch iTunes on your computer, then you will find your purchased or rented movies/TV show episodes under the "My Movies" list or "My TV Shows" list. Just click the movie, then you can view it with iTunes easily.

Quicktime: Start Quicktime Media Player on your computer, then click File > Open File to select the M4V files you want to play. The iTunes M4V content will be loaded immediately in Quicktime. Just click Play to start watching DRM protected M4V videos with Quicktime.

Play DRM Protected M4V Videos With Any Media Player You Want

Generally speaking, we are not allowed to play iTunes DRM M4V videos with VLC, Windows Media Player, Realplay or any other Non-Apple products. However, many people will prefer to use VLC or other free media players other than iTunes or Quicktime. How to play our iTunes M4V movies/TV show episodes with any media player we want?

We should remove the Fairplay DRM protection from M4V videos at first. TunesKit DRM Media Converter is a strongly recommended program to strip DRM protection from iTunes M4V videos. With TunesKit DRM Media Converter, we can easily get rid of Fairplay DRM protection from DRM protected M4V videos and convert DRMed M4V videos to unprotected MP4 videos losslessly.

Note: To use TunesKit for Mac successfully, you have to run the Mac OS X 10.8 or later and installed the newest iTunes.

Step 1. Run TunesKit DRM Media Converter on your computer.

Step 2. Add iTunes DRM Videos to TunesKit

Click "Add Files" button to import iTunes DRMed videos to TunesKit. You can also drag and drop video files to TunesKit.

Step 3. Start to remove DRM protection from iTunes M4V videos.

Click "Convert" button to start removing DRM protection. After the conversion finished, then you will get DRM free MP4 videos with lossless quality. And you can play the MP4 videos with any media player you like. All subtitles (closed captioning), audio tracks and AC 3 5.1 surround will be preserved in the output MP4 videos.

Fatima Cook An amateur writer from Freelance, who is skillful at technology review, news and tips.