Watching videos purchased from iTunes on a PC

[Dos Jotas]

So I purchased a season of a TV show that I couldn't find in my usual routes. When I try to play the video, it is really choppy. When I check task manager, the CPU usage goes from 0-5% to 100% and the memory usage goes up very little. This machine runs MPEGs and AVIs like a champ. Why are M4Vs such a challenge?

Here are my machines specs:
AMD Athlon XP 2000
Asus motherboard with a 333 FSB
1 G memory (I think it's PC2700)

It's not a state of the art machine, but it should handle video playback with out a problem. I'm kind of annoyed. Any suggestions?

[Kevin72594]

Try watching the video in a player other than iTunes. WMP may do a better job. If not then go into the task manager and set iTunes to a higher priority and that may do it as well.

[Dos Jotas]

I did. Unfortunately, M4Vs purchased from iTunes are encoded so that they can only be played in iTunes or quicktime player, neither worked well.

[8valvematt]

try changing the file extension to .mp4 and see if it works on other programs. you couold also try a converter. im not a computer genius..just somethings ive tried in the past that worked

[Matt Danger]

Originally Posted by 8valvematt

try changing the file extension to .mp4 and see if it works on other programs. you couold also try a converter. im not a computer genius..just somethings ive tried in the past that worked

If it was bought from the iTMS it will only work in iTunes and maybe Quicktime Player (never tried it) unless the DRM is stripped. As far as I know there are/were only two apps out there (myFairTunes and QtFairUse) that would remove the iTunes DRM and I think they're both out of date. I know myFairTunes will work up until iTunes 7.5.

JJ is this video in HD? I know that HD flicks are kind of GPU intensive depending on resolution. The issue is probably not with iTunes but instead with the video card trying to decode and render the video, if it is in fact HD. But my hardware knowledge is not that advanced so I could be wrong here.

[Dos Jotas]

I fixed the issue with this:
Buy the Toshiba Satellite P305D-S8828 17" Widescreen Laptop and other Laptop computers at circuitcity.com

It was $100 less last week when I bought it!

It was time for an upgrade anyway. My old machine had served me well for the past 5 years with minimal upgrades.

I'm now getting used to vista. It's not as bad as everyone says it is. Maybe a lot of the bug are worked out finally?