> From: Andrew Nielsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that > QuickTime is an architecture for time-dependent media and that it's > the different codecs that can work with that architecture that give > you the ability to play certain media types. > > Other than perhaps that the codecs haven't been written (for whatever > reason, including proprietary or copyright ones) it surely should be > possible for QuickTime to deal with all types of streaming and > non-streaming media.
For sure - Quicktime is a time-based media architecture that supports many different audio and video codecs as well as many other media track types such as Flash, various graphics and animation formats, 3D, sprite, text etc. Theoretically it should indeed be able to play back all Windows Media and Real Media formats if compatible codecs were written for the Quicktime architecture. In fact this has happened to some extent with the old Windows video format AVI (using the Cinepak codec) having been built into Quicktime as well as various other codecs such as DivX being available as plug-ins from third parties. Flip4mac makes a more advanced Windows Media plugin for Quicktime on Mac OS X that allows you to play Windows Media versions 7, 8 or 9 from within Quicktime. This commercial plug-in set costs from US$9.99 and up: http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv.htm I'm not aware of a Real Media plug-in for QT, but don't see why it wouldn't be possible. However, the issue is that only the basic AVI plugin comes standard with QT while the others have to be searched out and/or paid for, so the experience for the vast majority of the general public is as if they did not exist. This is why I believe it is important for us to encourage the content providers to provide their content in formats that larger segments of their potential customers can easily access. MPEG-4 (and thus Quicktime) has growing traction now on many platforms (digital cameras, mobile phones, iPods, PDAs, HD-DVD & Blueray, Digital Satellite etc) and is an open standard not "owned" by Microsoft, Apple or Real which *should* make it the default choice these days. -Mart
