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Have Microsoft Surface RT stream music and movies from networked PCs

PavtubeVideo

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Microsoft’s in-house Surface RT tablet isrepresentative of Microsoft’s continuing vision for combining productivity and entertainment into a device that will bridge all others, from the Xbox to the PC to the mobile phone platform.

The Xbox Music and Video are featured prominently on the Start screen, with the Xbox Music service allowing Xbox Live Gold members access to music from all of their favorite artists for no additional cost, while the video service allows you to rent or purchase movies and television shows for a price (in actual dollars, not Microsoft Points). Popular apps such as Netflix and Hulu Plus are also available, as well as a bunch of free streaming music services, shopping applications, e-readers, and more. As long as your Surface RT is connected to home network or Wi-Fi, it’s so easy to enjoy streaming music and videos from online stores. And with Instant-on streaming in HD, you don't have to wait for it to download—just start watching.

It takes a few more steps, however, to access your media from local computer. As we all know, there’s no Windows Media Player on the Surface RT, and thus the Play To feature is not available any longer. If you’d like to have Microsoft Surface RT stream music and movies from other networked PCs in your home, follow the steps below.

Step 1. Create or join a HomeGroup on your Surface RT and local PC.
1. Open HomeGroup by swiping in from the right edge of the screen, tapping Settings (or if you're using a mouse, pointing to the upper-right corner of the screen, moving the mouse pointer down, and then clicking Settings), tapping or clicking Change PC settings, and then tapping or clicking HomeGroup.

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2. Tap or click Create, or enter the homegroup password, and then tap or click Join.

Step 2. Turn on network sharing on the Windows 8 tab.
1. View a list of available networks by swiping in from the right edge of the screen, tapping Settings (or if you're using a mouse, pointing to the upper-right corner of the screen, moving the mouse pointer down, and then clicking Settings), and then tapping or clicking the network icon.

2. Press and hold or right-click the network you're connected to, and then tap or click Turn sharing on or off. The network sharing setting is only available for Wi‑Fi, Ethernet, VPN (non-domain), and dial-up (non-domain) connections. It's unavailable for domain networks. On VPN or dial-up connections, you must connect to the network first, then press and hold or right-click the network name to change the network sharing setting.

3. Tap or click Yes, turn on sharing and connect to devices.

Step 3. Access shared folder from your Microsoft Surface RT

1. Connect Surface RT to your home network.

2. To see the files, folders, and libraries that have been shared on your network, open File Explorer on Surface RT. Open File Explorer by swiping in from the right edge of the screen, tapping Search (or if you're using a mouse, pointing to the upper-right corner of the screen, moving the mouse pointer down, and then clicking Search), entering File Explorer in the search box, tapping or clicking Apps, and then tapping or clicking File Explorer.

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You can now use Surface RT to access all files in your Homegroup, and shared folders from other PCs. on your network. The location where the shared items appear depends on the type of network you have.
 
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PavtubeVideo

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Remove DRM from iTunes M4V and Sync iTunes library to Surface RT and Pro

This article will show you how to get music, movies or TV-shows purchased from iTunes to Microsoft Surface RT for smoothly playing.

Q: I just bought a new Surface tablet and I am wondering if I could play music files I purchased on iTunes on my Surface RT? I have searched around the internet but I haven't got a specific answer to this question. Besides, the movies and TV-shows I have purchased on iTunes will be playable on my Surface RT?

A: Before answering your question, keep in mind that the Windows RT based Surface tablet can not play any iTunes purchases with Apple Digital Rights Management (FairPlay DRM). However, all iTunes songs (at least in the US) will be DRM-free in steps since April 7, 2009. From my experience, if the song isn't copy protected it should play. For the little copyrighted iTunes songs, in .m4p format, you can upgrade these songs to DRM-free files for US$0.30/song or use DRM removal software to strip DRM from them free of charge.

For iTunes videos, if they are video podcasts from iTunes, you can play them on your Surface RT without any problem. But if they are Movies, TV-shows or Music videos which you purchased directly through iTunes store, they are all with DRM protection. DRM can not stop you transferring iTunes video purchases to Surface RT, but the videos will say "this file is not supported" or "this video can't be played" when you play these iTunes movies/TV shows on the Surface RT tablet.

sync-itunes-with-surface-rt.jpg


In order to play iTunes video files on Microsoft Surface RT, you have to remove DRM from iTunes movies and convert iTunes M4V files to Surface RT compatible video formats(MP4 with H.264 video codec is highly recommended). To get the work done, a DRM Removal software is needed. If you're looking for ease-to-use, just check out Pavtube's ChewTune, which is an intuitive and stable DRM converter to help you remove DRM protection from iTunes, Amazon, Zune, BBC iPlayer, Napster, Blockbuster, etc. and convert videos to all popular video formats like MP4, MOV, MKV, WMV, AVI, FLV, etc. for playing and sharing anywhere you like. Meanwhile the playback of the converted videos is as decent as possible as original. The equivalent Mac version is the ChewTune Mac, which can convert and transfer iTunes movies to Surface RT on Mac OS X. Free download the right version and enjoy your iTunes M4V movies on Microsoft Surface RT without any hassle!

Download iTunes to Surface RT Converter:



Convert, Transfer and Play iTunes movies on Surface RT

The quick start guide below uses ChewTune Windows screenshots. The way to encoding iTunes M4V to Surface on Mac is almost the same. Just make sure you get the right version according to your computer operating system.

Step 1: Add iTunes movies to the software. Launch the DRM converter and click "Add Video" "Add Folder" to load the iTunes video files to the program for converting. You can also simply drag and drop media files to the source pane to add. Batch conversion is supported so that you can add multiple files.

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Step 2: Choose the output video format and output folder. Click "Format" bar and move mouse to "Windows" column, you can easily find the profile of "Microsoft Surface Windows RT H.264 Video (*.mp4)". The output videos could fit on Surface RT or Pro perfectly.

surface-rt-profile.jpg


If you like, you can click "Settings" to change the video encoder, resolution, frame rate, etc. as you wish. For watching videos on the Windows RT based Surface Tablet, 720p with 1500~2500kbps is just all right. I found that bitrate higher results in big file size, and lower visible quality loss.

Step 3: After above steps, just click "Convert" to start removing iTunes DRM protection and converting iTunes M4V to Microsoft Surface RT MP4 videos.

Once the process completes, download and transfer the DRM-free iTunes videos to your Surface RT Tablet via USB cable. Then you are free to enjoy and watch iTunes movies on Microsoft Surface RT as you like.

And yes, this workaround works with Windows 8 as well, of course. Click here to get known the basic tips for watching movies on Microsoft Surface RT.

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