Apple sucks ass!

[Liquid Len]

Oops sorry I was misreading posts. So...
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[garyb]

[King of Snake]

I know what you mean though, these days everything tries to be a 'media player', even IrFanView!

All of the above is Windows-specific btw, Apple only has QuickTime doesn't it..?

quicktime is not a codec.

I never said it was! Re-read my post; I am talking about media players and the fact that just about every bloody windows application wants to be one and tries to hog all the file associations.

I then compared this to the situation on the Mac platform, which only seems to have Quicktime as its media player (probably not entirely true, but I was attempting to be humerous).

Royston

okay sorry my bad
Then again, who is responsible for installing multiple media players on your windows machine? No one is forcing you to do that.
I get by pretty well with just Quicktime and Winamp, this lets me play pretty much anything I can throw at it. Yes the mac seems simpler with just quicktime as the main media application, but it also means you can't play avi's or wma files on your mac (at least not without additional plugins).

[King of Snake]

Simply, I wasn't be able yet to find/install on a single media player all the necessary codecs for all kind of media content on the web.
When people surf a page containing media not supported by the installed player, instructions are given for the (pseudo-automated) installation of a further player, not for futher codecs.

well, as long as you have at least the basic media player software installed : windows media player (obviously every windows pc has this standard), quicktime and a flash and realmedia plugin for your browser, this shouldn't really be a problem.
Ok so it's still a bunch of different formats but you only need to install that stuff once and then everything should work right?

Sure it would be nice if there would just be one standard, but on the other hand competition is good and drives innovation

[Counterparts]

Then again, who is responsible for installing multiple media players on your windows machine? No one is forcing you to do that.

Aye, 'tis true. Although I was kinda surprised when IrfanView declared itself as a viewer for ... well pretty much everything!

The daft thing even tries to play softwave flash files (!) Then moans that it can't

[Cochise]

Sorry Liquid Len, I edited in the meanwhile



I agree extreme standardization can heavily restrain innovation.
And I agree things are not that complicated using windows as platform (unluckyly don't know about mac).

.asf, . asx and other compilation files, used as pointer by some web site can represent an hindrance for open source platform.

However, inside web environment, where machines having different architectures and using different platforms can easily communicate by the same standard protocol, I personally look at the codecs hindrance like an incoherence.
IMO, access to web content would has to be granted, quite apart from the brand of the used software.

[Cochise]

Why do I have to install many media players???
M$, like Apple, have their proprietary codecs; some media content can be played with Real only; some other are coded by Ogg Vorbis.
This kind of things make people goes mad.

I know this can look exaggerated, but imagine it rebuilding a system after a crash!

[astroman]

...However, inside web environment, where machines having different architectures and using different platforms can easily communicate by the same standard protocol, I personally look at the codecs hindrance like an incoherence...

sorry to but have a look at the source text of an arbitrary collection of 'regular' web pages...
I also believed in that nonsense and even decided to start a project 'using a web-interface as a cross platform approach'... man, was I f**ked...

cheers, Tom

[Cochise]

I know this can look exaggerated, but imagine it rebuilding a system after a crash!

Not exactly a "quicktime", without disk imaging tools



P.S.

No way here too. I've tryed to manage activeX and other settings, but I can web-browse mp3 files by quicktime only, using Explorer6.
Firefox2 seems to be more tamable.