How To Bypass The Zune's WiFi Sharing DRM

We knew it would be done sooner or later, and now that we have the mod to use your Zune as a portable hard drive, a method to bypass the Zune's WiFi sharing DRM is finally here.

First, you need to enable hard drive mode using the instructions, refer this post.

Then, rename whatever files—MP3s, movies, programs—to have the extension ".jpg" in order to fool the Zune into thinking it's an image. This hack works because Zune doesn't apply DRM to images!

Then what?
Now, take your Zune and send the folder containing these files to your buddy along with a real photo. If you only send a fake photo, an error is thrown. The last step is to have your friend sync the Zune with their computer, open the "containing folder" where the files were downloaded, and rename the files back to their correct extension.

We tried doing this before with just the Zune software, without the storage hack, and Zune threw an error because it resizes the images down in order to conserve space, and our file wasn't a real image.

How to convert DVD to Microsoft Zune player

This guide will describe the basic steps about converting DVD to WMV/MP4 for Microsoft zune. It should be very easy to understand. I hope it helps.
First, you can Google search ‘Wondershare DVD to Zune Ripper’ and then download it. Or you can download directly from this link
http://support.wondershare.com/stat/?action=down&id=37&sid=2
Then install and run it.

Step1: Add DVD files

1)Rip your DVD files from DVD-ROM drive by clicking “Open DVD”.
Many friends ask me how to copy movies form DVDs to hard drive. This process calls ‘Rip’. Additional, ripping protected DVDs is illegal (unless you have the own right of the DVDs). This software helps you rip DVDs automatically. You needn’t know how to break the css protect. You will not be confused by the complicated operation of ‘DVD Decrypter’ or ‘DVD Shrink’.
2)Or Load .ifo files from your hard drive by clicking “Add ifo”. IFO file is an index of DVD files. It contains many control info about the DVD movies.
3)Or right click on the blank area in the center of the main interface to import video files from your hard drive or DVD-ROM drive.

Step2: select subtitle, audio and output format

1)Regular DVD movie usually has several subtitle, like English, French, German, etc. You can select anyone according to your need.
2)Select Audio it the same as select Subtitle.
3)Format: this software can convert DVD to WMV and MP4 format which are fit for Zune player, if also can extract audio track from DVD and save as MP3 and WMA format which are fit for any other MP3 player.

Step3: Start Convert
After all the things done, click the ‘start’ button to start the conversion.


Step 4: transfer to Zune
After finish conversion, add your converted files to zune software and click 'Sync contents to and from your Zune', then you can enjoy your DVDs on Zune.
You can download the Zune software free from here
http://www.zune.net/en-us/meetzune/software.htm


Tips
This software provides rich options for you to set; it also provides basic video edit function. After you add the DVDs.


1)Click the option button, a window will be popped up. Here you can set resolution, frame rate, width/length ration, video bitrate, codec, conversion speed, sample rate, audio channels and audio bitrate. Here are some tips about the options

1.Resolution: Zune’s resolution is 320*240.
2.Frame rate: 25fps is PAL, 30fps is NTSC.
3.Length/Width ration: 4:3 is common display; 16:9 is width screen display.
4.Codec: this software provides two codes. For converting MP4, you can use XviD or H.264. For converting WMV, here are three encodes for you, WM1, WM2 and WM3.
5.Video bitrate and audio bitrate: higher bitrate provides better quality with lager size and longer conversion time.

2)Click the “effect” button; you can set the Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Audio volume for the DVD movie.

3)If the default setting, this software convert your DVD into one files with all chapters, if you just want to convert some chapters of the DVD, you can click the ‘Show chapters’ button, then check the box before the chapters you want to convert.

4)If you just want to convert some parts of the DVD, you can drag the scroll bar below the preview window to set the conversion start and end time, or you can click the ‘trim’ button to set it exactly.

5)DVD movie often has a black border to both the top and bottom, if you want to cut it and watch your DVD with full screen, you can drag the yellow frame to cut any parts you don’t want when you preview the DVD movie, or you can click ‘crop’ button to set it exactly.

Rumor: Zune to Pay You For Sharing Songs?

The Microsoft Zune may pay you for sharing a song with others if they end up buying that song themselves. As you probably know, the Zune's WiFi capability will let you send a song to another Zune user, and then that user can listen to it three times for free within three days, after which a prompt appears asking for $1 to buy it. As the rumor goes, Microsoft will give you an unspecified number of credits for passing along that song that was later bought. Then, you can redeem those credits for free music or anything else from the Zune Marketplace. This is a great idea. If enough people buy into Zune, the product will reach critical mass, and because of this bounty, everyone will be eager to offer their song lists to others in hopes of amassing enough credits to buy more music. It's viral/incentive marketing on a micro-payment scale. If this is just a false rumor, if I were Microsoft I would do it anyway.