Dear friends:
Unless I am mistaken,
1) So far the only real streaming audio/video player we have on Linux is
RealPlayer. That of, of course, is the biggie, and we are very lucky to
have it and to have the RealPlayer G2 (though still Alpha).
2) Aktion is great and with the "plugger" plug-in for Netscape you can
play Quicktime directly in Netscape (but NOT streamed). Most of the
QuickTime files it plays are QT version 2.1 or possibly version 3.
However, Aktion cannot play the latest Quicktime 4 nor, most
importantly, Quicktime4's streaming media, which is now the third major
streaming media on the Net (after RealPlayer, Windows Media Player).
3) There is, as Axalon says, no Linux player that can currently play
Windows Media Player (.asf) files, either in playback or streaming.
Personal conclusion: Linux is about to get the Mozilla AND Netscape 5.0
browsers. That's great news. It will also soon have a much more powerful
KDE 2.0 web browser called Konqueror. It will even have, for what it's
worth, the Opera browser for Linux. But, currently, out of the three
major media streaming clients, it has access to only one. What I am
curious about is the following: Quicktime uses an open standards
protocol for its QT 4 streaming media player. Would it be possible for
Linux to develop a streaming player that will use the same open
protocols to play Quicktime 4's streaming media files?
Yours,
Benjamin
--
Benjamin and Anna Sher
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sher's Russian Web
http://www.websher.net
