Tunebite Platinum is a small and compact application whose aim in life is to help you convert media into the format of your choice, and also to remove copy protection where applicable. It goes without saying straight from the start that this may put you into conflict with law-makers in your part of the world, so you should check out the law of your land before embarking on such activities. Just saying.

The program is a small download, and upon installation you have the option of setting it up on your PC, or directly onto a USB stick. To do the latter, you need 400MB of free space on your stick of choice, and for it to be FAT32 formatted, as pretty much all USB memory sticks are. The reason for the space requirement? Because the software will store content directly onto the stick.

If you follow the PC installation, then you get the now obligatory option to have the software scour your music collection and integrate it into the application. It's not compulsory, although it is advised that you let Tunebite hunt around your PC for the LAME encoder to allow MP3 support. If you don't have that already, it's free to download off the web elsewhere.

It doesn't take long to install Tunebite (although on one of our test systems, it did ask for a reset), and before you know it, you're staring at its main working screen. This is sensibly organised, and if DRM-stripping is what you're looking to do, the first button you should probably press is the one that searches your machine for media files that have digital rights management attached.

This takes a bit longer, and once it's found files, the conversion job is equally straightforward. In fact, it's hard to imagine it being made any easier. Furthermore, Tunebite is happy to get on with things without requiring lots of input from you, and it can make light work of converting media to your format of choice.

Tunebite can also perform other functions. It allows you, for instance, to record content from the screen, which means that if there's a protected video clip online you'd like to grab, you can. You can also record audio streams online too, and to get at these options you tap between the converter and web choices at the top of the screen.

What lifts Tunebite, however, is just how simple it makes everything. Even something like converting one file format to another is done with the majesty of the old batch conversions in Paint Shop Pro. It's as simple as it should be, and gets the job done.

There are, of course, grey areas in which Tunebite is operating. But if you're fed up with having legitimately bought media files blighted by archaic rights management, then this is undoubtedly a strong application to fight back with. Even if you just want to get your media into a uniform format, it's quite a bargain.

Verdict
A really useful application, that makes light work of media conversion and easily does the job it's designed to do.

Company: RapidSolution Software AG

Tags: usb flash drive personal computer digital rights management file format copy protection multimedia windows music and audio