July 19, 2005 12:26 AM PDT

iTunes 4.9 Special Report: Podcast problems: "This computer not authorized..."; more

by CNET staff

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"This computer is not authorized..." to play podcasts Several users receive the error message "This Computer Is Not Authorized To Play..." when attempting to play downloaded podcasts.

MacFixIt reader Bill writes:

"Downloaded a podcast of a Mac radio show. It is listed as 'free.' It downloaded fine and I can play it on an MP3 player but iTunes will not play it. Says 'This computer is not authorized to play that song.'"

Sylvain Lemire adds:

"I just updated to iTunes 4.9. It is not connected to my iPod since I connect my iPod to my home computer. I've subscribed to inside Mac Radio and downloaded their latest weekly podcast. There is this message when I try to play it : "This computer is not authorized to play this copy of 'Inside Mac Radio Weekly'"

Pete Shoemark reports that, in his case, the bug only occurs for non-admin users:

"Not sure if this might be an isolated occurrence, but I seem to be having a problem with podcasts and multiple users. Our home Mac has separate accounts for each family member. The podcasts work fine for me (I have the Administrator account), but when I try to access them from another family member's non-administrator account I get a message telling me that I 'do not have enough access privileges for this operation'. I know that our (DSL) network connection is working, so I assume that the problem must be something to do with needing Administrator access to get the podcasts to work. If I switch between accounts, pretty much any podcast seems to work from the admin account, but nothing works from non-admin users' accounts."

Solutions

In some cases, it appears that simply re-downloading a fresh copy of the problematic podcast can result in proper playing.

MacFixIt reader Carl Lorentzen writes:

"I've also experienced the 'you are not authorized...' message from iTunes 4.9 when trying to play a free podcast. In my case it happened with Adam Curry's Podfinder podcast. The problem seemed by be solved by deleting the podcast, and then downloading it again. The second download played fine."

Podcast limitations MacFixIt reader Doug Smith notes that there are some limiting differences between the way podcast files and and MP3/AAC tracks are treated in iTunes 4.9:

Doug writes:

"I have my preferences set to 'Keep: All unplayed episodes.' But no episodes are ever removed.

"I used the view options to add the play count column to the display and have verified that the tracks I think should be removed have play counts of 1 or more. (By the way, the play count is incremented when playing reaches the end of a track. So if you are listening and want to bail out, you have to run the playhead to the end for the track to be marked as played.)

"Also, unfortunately, podcast tracks cannot be seen by smart playlists. Otherwise, I would go back to my old system of manually deleting everything from a smart playlist looking for a play count greater than 0 with a genre of podcast. It appears that podcasts are treated separately from any other tracks.

"Finally, on the iPod, when a podcast track is finished playing, the iPod jumps all the way back to the main menu. This is a pain! Other kinds of tracks will continue playing the next track or jump back to the menu that contains the track that was last played."

Not reading tags generated by third-party applications MacFixIt reader Ian reports that iTunes 4.9 is no longer capable of reading ID3 tags generated by some third-party applications.

Ian writes:

"I now find that iTunes doesn't read id3 tags for year or track number created in ID3X or Media Rage. It also fails to calculate the bitrate for VBR joint stereo files. Also says the artwork is not editable.

"This is annoying because the editor function of iTunes is very slow on my 450 G4. I used to be able to rip my CD's and tag them with Audion and ID3X."

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