[MW Forums]

Flip4Mac has released its ling awaited updated adding support for Intel Macs. more

[tomtom]

Does anyone have good to say about the player component?
I occasionally have a need to view WMV files. When selected, these take for ever to show in the review Window (Column View) Some open and some do not and most take a long time to load.

[Steve_S]

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Does anyone have good to say about the player component?

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I like having the integrated component in Quicktime as opposed to the lame Windows Media Player that Microsoft used to push on Mac users. In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to deal with WMV media at all. If you have to, Flip4Mac seems the best replacement so far. I haven't noticed any specific performance issues on my machines.
Steve

[JeffM]

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... support for MMS servers and live streams...

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I wonder if this means the problems using it with Gameday Audio and pro baseball game streams has been worked out? Guess I'll find out this afternoon. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
JeffM.

[macmanga]

I've installed F4M on 3 separate occasions on my G5 iMac and have had issues each time. The last time I installed, I lost the ability to stream flash video. An uninstall fixed things. I'm not enthusiastic about trying this again.

[Nobody]

With or without Flip4Mac, WMV files are awkward to play on Mac OS X 10.4.7. Long live QuickTime "mov" files!

[lkrupp]

"Does anyone have good to say about the player component?"
I am very pleased with the effort Flip4Mac is making. Version 2.1 has improved things for me on the PPC side of the house. The at&t/Yahoo video player started working after the upgrade. No controls but the video/audio does play ok. Yahoo had told me their player does not work with the Mac and they had no plans to support it. I have nothing but good things to say about Flip4Mac. It has solved a lot of issues for me that WMP 9 didn't. I hope they keep working on it because Apple sure hasn't lifted a finger help to Mac users view files and streams 85% of the world considers the default format for the web.
I personally think Flip4Mac should start charging a nice fee for the plugin. With MS WMP 9 out of the picture now they're about the only game in town for viewing .wmv or .wma files or streams.

[Jon Seff]

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I personally think Flip4Mac should start charging a nice fee for the plugin. With MS WMP 9 out of the picture now they're about the only game in town for viewing .wmv or .wma files or streams.

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The arrival of Flip4Mac and the demise of Windows Media Player for the Mac aren't just coincidental. I don't know the details of the deal, but Flip4Mac made its plugins specifically so MS could stop developing WMP for Mac (you'll notice that MS actually hosts the download).
There are several pay Flip4Mac products that let you convert and export Windows Media content already...I see no reason why Windows Media playback should cost anything now when it was free before.

[JeffM]

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I personally think Flip4Mac should start charging a nice fee for the plugin. With MS WMP 9 out of the picture now they're about the only game in town for viewing .wmv or .wma files or streams.

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I'm not sure about streams, but MPlayer and VLC both play .wmv and .wma files and are free, so Flip4Mac doesn't quite have the market sewn up yet. In fact, as far as streams go, the workaround I've been using up till now is using the last version of WiMP, version 9, to play the stream, so even that old horse isn't completely dead yet.
Considering even Flip4Mac isn't yet a without fail solution to the problem, it's probably a bit too soon for them to declare total world domination. :-)
JeffM.

[tomtom]

Thanks

[tomtom]

Jeff - Playback is free when it works - well or not.
As I see it, the issue is that Windows is the dominant PC platform and more and more content publishers, broadcasters and the like are being both lazy and shortsighted and simply implementing WMV solutions.
Whne it comes to WMV in web pages, we are more often than not, left out.
There are many cross platform solutions available and of late only Flash is making any in-road.
We as Mac users are having a pretty cr appy experience as a result.

[cseeman]

VLC does NOT play WM9 files last I checked and I don't think MPlayer does either. Neither come close to working as a browser plugin too. Only Flip4Mac does that.

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I'm not sure about streams, but MPlayer and VLC both play .wmv and .wma files and are free, so Flip4Mac doesn't quite have the market sewn up yet. In fact, as far as streams go, the workaround I've been using up till now is using the last version of WiMP, version 9, to play the stream, so even that old horse isn't completely dead yet.
Considering even Flip4Mac isn't yet a without fail solution to the problem, it's probably a bit too soon for them to declare total world domination. :-)
JeffM.

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[cseeman]

Would love to see an example of this issue. Care to post a link to a flash file that you've had a conflict with Flip4Mac with?
I don't even get the conflict with DivX anymore if you have the latest version of DivX and Flip4Mac.

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I've installed F4M on 3 separate occasions on my G5 iMac and have had issues each time. The last time I installed, I lost the ability to stream flash video. An uninstall fixed things. I'm not enthusiastic about trying this again.

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[cseeman]

In fact they've gone the other way. If you remember in the early days the Player was $10. I wouldn't doubt that Microsoft "handing the ball" to Flip4Mac played a roll in allowing them to make it free.
As one of the beta testers, the web plugin is the toughest thing for them to work on. So many web pages have so many differences in back end code, javascript, java applets, asx playlist code, codes that are searching to see if your browser has WMP10 installed (let alone that the Mac only got to WMP9) . . . and they're giving away the web plugin!

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I see no reason why Windows Media playback should cost anything now when it was free before.

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