Re: Can't take it.
posted by rick on September 29th, 2004 at 5:10PM
posted by rick on September 29th, 2004 at 5:10PM
The only difference with Windows/WMP is that WMP promotes a proprietary format (Windows Media) and the other OS/distros do not. But that leads to another point that further emphasizes why this whole lawsuit makes no sense whatsoever.
It doesn't matter if your player is installed in every computer in the world; if it doesn't support the user's preferred media format, then the player is useless. I have all three players installed on my computer. But if given the choice I'd choose Quicktime over Real /or/ Windows Media for video clips. Why? Because I like how Quicktime caches the download and in general I think it's better quality. The fact that Quicktime is not bundled with Windows didn't stop me from downloading it.
All three players are available for free; therefore none of the companies profit from having users install them. Their revenue comes from selling software to create and stream the media in their format. Since installing the players isn't a big obstacle, the major deciding factor on which player the user installs will be the format of the media he or she wants to play. If all of the media was in Real format then I would /have/ to install RealPlayer no matter how bloated it was. So if anything the real issue would be if Microsoft is giving this software away to content providers. (And I'm too lazy to look up if this is the case. But given my experience online at least there is no shortage of Quicktime media available so this doesn't seem likely.)
