Hi, I have secure WMA files bought via OD2 service in the Uk. I know that these are tranferrable to Net MD players becuase they support SDMI. However I can not get the music to transfer.
If I open it in Sonic Stage, I get the error that the license can't be found or something. It plays fine though. In real player it says it can't recognise the format but it can play the file and in Windows Media Player, my Net MD will not show up as a device.
Please help! How can I get my Net MD as a device in Windows Media PLayer, and/or how can I transfer the protected content using Sonic Stage/Real One/Window Media Player.
I'm very greatful for any suggestions.

Personally I would never buy a DRM enabled portable player and I don't know a direct solution for your problem. However as a work-around you could try to decode the files to wav and upload or transcode them to your player. Read this and this thread on the forums to learn how to achieve this.

Unfortunately I don't think there's any easy way for you to get these songs onto your MD. The programs that I use for my NetMD (Realplayer, SimpleBurner) won't transfer wma files. Plus you have the secure issue to deal with.

Likely your best option is to burn a CD using WMP and then using Simple Burner to copy the files onto the MD. You'll end up converting wma to wave back to ATRAC3, which isn't the best thing for sound quality, but it's likely the easiest way for you.

This will not make any difference to the sound quality if done correctly. If you directly transcode the WMA to ATRAC through Sonicstage (if it worked ) or if you decode the WMA into WAVS and then encode/transfer those to NetMD the result is exactly the same. Whether you directly transcode WMA to ATRAC3 or go WMA to WAV to ATRAC3 the result should be identical.

So either go for the "burn a CD and then rip it in Sonicstage" approach, or even just decode the WMA files to wavs first and then transfer those with Sonicstage/OpenMG. Both of these "fine Sony applications" will directly import/encode/transfer WAV files, no problems. And if you have the file name of each WAV file containing the track name and artist, you'll get titles on your MD as well!

Hope this helps clear up things.

Den.

Hanky, NetMD players aren't exactly DRM products. The software used to transfer to them is heavily DRM-f***ed.

iiicrules... try deleting Winamp's WMA plug-in, setting the directshow plug-in to support WMA, and Disk Writing those WMA's to WAV files. The WAV's should transfer to your recorder just fine.