Troubleshooting iTunes 4: Playing songs over the Internet; Faster playing speed; International support; more

Playing songs over the Internet One of the most unheralded new features of iTunes 4 is the ability to share your playlists not just via Rendezvous, but also directly over the Internet. If you're behind a firewall, simply make sure the port #3689 is open on your router, pointing to your machine. Then go into your preferences and allow other users to connect to your machine. Then, your friends can pull down from "Advanced" to "Connect to Shared Music..." One caveat, however, is that you can't listen to other people's purchased music via Rendezvous (or the "connect to shared music"... feature).

Faster playing speed Dan Stegman reported an issue where songs purchased from the iTunes music store played at a slightly faster-than-normal rate. He says that restoring the unit (after backing up all files), seems to have fixed the higher-speed playing.

International support We are awaiting response from Apple regarding an inquiry about potential expansion of the music service internationally. Licensing terms are likely the current barricade.

AAC files and TiVo Last month, Tivo and Apple rolled out Tivo Home Media Option (HMO) which enables you to play your iTunes playlists and iPhoto albums on your television through your networked Tivo DVR. Unfortunately, iTunes 4 purchased songs are not recognized by Tivo Home Media Option. Apparently, Tivo Desktop for Mac does not recognize the AAC format of iTunes Music Store Music.

Also, it appears that music in iTunes 4 purchased at the Apple Music Store can't be selected to play in the background of an iPhoto slideshow. The message "Error during audio playback. The file could not be played because it could not be found" comes up. The purchased music plays fine in iTunes, however.

Music store sign-in is caps sensitive If you are having problems signing in to the new iTunes music store, make sure that you are not using random capital letters in your e-mail address or other login information.

Font problems, solutions MacFixIt reader Shawn Platkus offers some advice for users experiencing problems with poorly rendered fonts after upgrading to iTunes 4:

"Upon opening iTunes 4, I instantly cringed at the ugly looking font for the songs in the library. It appeared as if the font was no longer anti-aliased. After playing with it for a few minutes, I couldn't stand it anymore, so I went looking for a solution. It didn't take long to find one thank goodness."

"In the System Preferences under the General Preferences pane, there is an option for font smoothing. Mine was set to turn off text smoothing for font sizes 9 and smaller. I changed this to 8 or smaller, and then quit and re-launched iTunes, and viola, the font looked good again.

"The strange thing is however, that when I went back into the system prefs and changed the font smoothing size back to 9 and lower, the iTunes font still remained smooth."

Busy music servers An early indication of the service's initial success, the new iTunes Music Store has apparently buckled under pressure for a few readers, resulting in slow transfer speeds and occasionally the following error:

"We could not complete your Music Store request (504) There was an error in the Music Store. Please try again later."

One MacFixIt reader describes another problem caused by overloaded servers:

"I was unable to set up my Music Store account. The system took the data from my Apple Store account, which all looked correct. However, when I tried to input the requested credit card 'security code,' I got a response that said the Apple Music Store couldn't process my order and to try later."

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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