The new Flip4Mac solution for WMV broke a site that I uße regularly. The site:

http://www.sport1.at/coremedia/generator/id=3217348.html

is an online archive of FIS World Cup alpine skiing races - races that get awful coverage here in the States. With the old Microsoft player, the embeds worked fine. With the new Flip4MAc player, they don't render at all. It's a major step back.

And Windows Media is here to stay, like it or not. So having an ideal solution is key.

"Our focus really is in delivering the best experience to Windows customers."

They certainly have thier work cut out for them.

I know that Flip4Mac or even VLC/MPlayer works fine but when you are building a solution for clients you need something that is easy to use for end users. I'd love to see something like Flip4Mac come with quicktime.

A bigger concern for me is that lack of DRM support. I have clients asking about DRM right now and basically I'll have to cut Mac users out right now. Not just because of WMV, there doesn't seem to be a DRM option at all for Mac streaming.

I really think Apple needs to either formally add WMV support into quicktime or release a DRM toolkit that third parties can use.

macnavi says:

"After a hilarious keynote, which was a new high point in bad presentations"

Yeah, while Roz certainly has unbridled enthusiasm (well, I would hope so), she has inversely proportional total and complete lack of personality and charisma... and while Steve goes to great lengths to make sure everyone on stage with him is primed, reheearsed and briefed, why do I get the feeling that this is never the case with Roz Ho?

Mind you, Microsoft put her in charge after the prior guy left - and priorities are clear considering how the MacBU has trumpeted their work on the revisions of MSN messenger (still a piece of c***, compared to a third party tool like aMSN), while essential oversights and needed fixes in Entourage just languished. Oh, I forgot - we're supposed to get Spotlight support sometimes in March. How much you want to be it will be a c*** implementation?

"A bigger concern for me is that lack of DRM support. I have clients asking about DRM right now and basically I'll have to cut Mac users out right now. Not just because of WMV, there doesn't seem to be a DRM option at all for Mac streaming. "

This is by Microsoft's design - I spoke to the guys from Flip4Mac/Telestream about DRM support, and they reiterated that there will be none in their product - not because they haven't tried, but rather because MS made clear to them that DRM will only be supported on *their* platform (read: Windows) and MS will prevent any development on other platforms.

Essentially, classc Microsoft -- if they had a DRM backdoor, they could have provided many of the competing Windows Audio stores to gain an edge on Apple by providing support for DRM'd Windows Audio withing iTunes (iTunes uses QT to play music). As it stands, Napster et al are doomed to mediocrity... I'm really glad that the 'strategists' at Microsoft are the morons that they are.

Now EVERYONE can blame Apple for not supporting WMA and M$'s DRM.

Stupid F*cks.

This is actually rather disturbing news unless Flip4Mac or some other software developer creates an app for the Mac OS that allows viewing of MS DRM web videos.

Like it or not MS obviously has huge leverage to sway the grey suited hords of media executives worried about online video piracy to use their DRM. I smell a plot by MS to attempt to monoplize and dominate web DRM.

Who would've thought it could come to this? OS X is getting closer to perfection all the time! Soon enough there won't be any Microsoft products running under our favorite OS and we will finally be at peace. =)

Honestly though, this is good and bad news. Good because at least Microsoft won't be making another craptastic application to disrupt our zen-like user experience and we will still be able to view WMV content through this third-party codec.

Bad, because too many nut-cases think a computer world without Microsoft is uninhabitable and will begin to dismiss the Mac platform altogether. But this is could actually be a good thing too; Do we really want these types of people as Mac users?

Won't work. Most (not all) creative types use Macs. Apple can say their DRM works on 99% of the computers out there; Windows and OS X. Microsoft has to tell them MS DRM only works on 90%; just Windows. Do you honestly think most of the people who make the content are going to alienate themselves from their own content?

Funny thing is, all the other content providers are screaming at Apple to open up their DRM while they really should be screaming at Microsoft to create a Mac compatible version of their DRM. Microsoft is more interested in locking people into Windows.

Honestly, nothing beats mplayer for all video playback.

It can play QT,Divx,WMV,DVD's along with every codec I've ever heard of.

This is flying under the radar now, but as said above involving DRM and such, this is MS's first software attack in the war over media. They assume the OS wars are over and are jumping over their inertia there into the living room.

I assume for MS to do this, they must have more partners beyond MTV and others to squeeze Apple out of the living room. So here we go. Apple has been launching missiles unilaterally for a while now, MS just joined the battle for real.

wmp was a junk version of media player with weak quality. an don the FASTES macs it wouldn't play back smoothly while multi tasking, while

everything else would be chugging a long like a champ. they are smart to stop developing it further because there is no nee dto make it crappier than it already is. no support for protected content means they never cared for a complete integrated and functional product anyway. VLC handles regular wmv video any way. so nothing lost.