John,
I have sometimes wondered why the ABC has not used MPEG 4 for cross-platform audio and visual content, since it is plays in Real and QuickTime players. (Actually, I've wondered, 'why not QuickTime?' since it's installed on more PCs than Real and, from what I understand, the server cost is negligible. But MPEG 4 is probably more to the point.)
I had a listen Frank Casanova's talk, given recently at the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment Conference in San Francisco ( http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/ctia2004/ ), and was impressed by the commitment Apple appears to be showing to open standards in video and audio media. Is this not something that fits with the Web Standards ethos?
-Hugh Todd
Our policy for some time was to go for Real, if there was only time or money to use one format, despite percieved problems with the company itself, simply because players were available for more platforms. There were, back in the day, players for Sun SPARC and all kinds of less mainstream platforms. There's a Unix/Linux player even now: http://www.real.com/linux/
The essential problem here is that a client is asking for one format only. Why? Two formats are always better than one. I don't know what our policy is now but it used to be "both Real and WMP if you can, Real if you can't".
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