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Sounds like Drive-In from Flip4Mac http://www.flip4mac.com/drivein.htm

Why wouldn't they license something like this, and include it in iTunes?

Flip4Mac DriveIn

"Drive-in is an innovative application that allows you to store your personal DVD movie library on your Mac. It is now available as a public beta.

Using Drive-in you can create an image of a DVD disc on your laptop or home entertainment system. The image preserves the quality, navigation and special features of the original DVD and can be played using Apple's DVD Player or Front Row."

You can play WMV files in OSX with the Flip4Mac codec: http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htm

Might be worth trying the latest version of Perian to improve other format support?
http://perian.org/

You'll also have to update to the latest version of Flip4Mac if you want to play Windows Media (WMV) files:
http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htm

Your G5s can encode WMVs because your company bought this: http://flip4mac.com/wmv.htm - or it was bundled with some software you use, it comes with Sorensons' Squeeze or Telestreams' Episode Pro, for example.

Check you /Library/Quicktime folder. You will find files "Flip4Mac WMV Export.component" and "Flip4Mac WMV Import.component". Both are (c) Telestream. You won't find these component on vanilla macs, as shipped by Apple.

WRT Linux, I don't have problem playing most WMV either (with exception of WMV2 - windows dlls don't work in x64). But then, I know how to install mplayer/vlc/xine, but ordinary users can't do this. Additionaly, it is of questionable legality in some (read: US and Japan) countries.

Mobile phones were dealt with AC above, so I will skip it.

Porn industry is not very good model. Yes, they have amazing capability to use today's technology, but they don't have any long term strategy and what's most important: their decision "is cheap". If it turns being disaster, nothing happens, just change course. They are not commited to anything. If Beeb, or any corporation went this way, you would see a lot of fallen heads.

You'll see more and more companies doing this kind of thing!

It's not preferential. Other companies can make products that interoperate with PlaysForSure.

Really? Then show me where I can get a software player not made by Microsoft capable of playing PlaysForSure Media!

• Nullsoft Winamp
  Can I play my purchased music from services such as the new Napster, MusicMatch, MusicNow, or BuyMusic.com through Winamp 5?
  Yes. Yes you can.
• Amazon Unbox video player
• Musicmatch Jukebox

In particular, show me where I can get one that works on operating systems other than Windows!

In contrast, other software companies are prohibited from licensing FairPlay. Some companies want to license FairPlay so that their software can play iTunes Store media, but Apple refuses to license their DRM.

That said, I'm not sure if I agree with Norway's decision to ban FairPlay. This might be excessive regulation.

Try Flip4Mac. http://www.flip4mac.com/

Did you search Here http://www.flip4mac.com/flip4mac_home.htm

"I haven't seen Jaguar, yet"

Jaguar?? I presume you meant to say "Leopard"

"I do know watching a 640x480 WMV on OSX is like upsampling a 160x120 video into 1080 high-def- UGLY"

Not at all. A 640x480 wmv file on windows has the same resolution as on OS X. They play fine with the flip4mac plug-in for quicktime. VLC can handle a lot of them too.

Nor do they make the components for Quicktime - those are produced by a company called Flip4Mac

I agree with your overall statement that .wma is more locked down than .aac, but while it is true that "MS doesn't make an updated version of WMP for OSX", it is because they are outsourcing Windows Media support on OS X. The free Flip4Mac player is a QuickTime Player plugin that enables it to play Windows Media files. It works fine on every standalone .wma, .wmv file I've seen, but it occasionally has trouble with content integrated into a web page.

You can get a Quicktime plugin for Windows Media here and a Quicktime plugin for Ogg here. iTunes just calls Quicktime to play all your music, so if Quicktime can play it, so can iTunes. Knock yourself out.

If it works so well, how come I can have an AVI demuxer, an MP3 codec, a WMV3 codec, yet not be able to play files with WMV3 video and MP3 audio in an AVI container?

DirectShow only needs the individual components installed, and it will build a codec graph that can decode the whole thing. Quicktime apparentyl does nothing of the kind, and forces every demuxer to handle video and audio formats on its own. This is probably the reason there is no MKV or OGG demuxer available for QuickTime.

See:

http://www.flip4mac.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview .aspx?catid=29&threadid=842&enterthread=y
http://www.flip4mac.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview .aspx?catid=29&threadid=1141&enterthread=y

If it works so well, how come I can have an AVI demuxer, an MP3 codec, a WMV3 codec, yet not be able to play files with WMV3 video and MP3 audio in an AVI container?

DirectShow only needs the individual components installed, and it will build a codec graph that can decode the whole thing. Quicktime apparentyl does nothing of the kind, and forces every demuxer to handle video and audio formats on its own. This is probably the reason there is no MKV or OGG demuxer available for QuickTime.

See:

http://www.flip4mac.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview .aspx?catid=29&threadid=842&enterthread=y
http://www.flip4mac.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview .aspx?catid=29&threadid=1141&enterthread=y

Front Row plays anything Quicktime can. And there are codec plugins for Quicktime on the PowerPC side to handle pretty much everything. Below is a list of codecs I used on my PowerPC Mac Mini to play back pretty much everything I had except an occasional Real Media file. Keep in mind these have to be coded specifically for Intel to work on the new Mini properly.

Divx 6: http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/download/
XVid delegate: http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~naegelic/download/
3vix: http://www.3ivx.com/download/macos.html
AC3/A52 decoder: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=83360
WMV Decoder for Quicktime: http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv.htm
Quicktime MPEG2 decoder, $20: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/

Actually, I think iTunes or QTPro will convert any Quicktime movie to iPod format semi-automatically. Unfortunately, I currently use Beyond TV for my TV tuner and it won't save as Quicktime (just WMV and mpeg2).

Flip4Mac plugin for QuickTime Player allows QTP to play WMV and WMA files. $10. Living w/o another MS product: priceless. http://www.flip4mac.com/

...BTW, Flip4Mac will play the WMV files via QT and in browsers, so this truly is a non story...

Not that I'm concerned about over-stressing MS's servers while we all look for the latest version, but in the spirit of karma whoring...

The crash in Quicktime 7.0.4 is fixed by the update at http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htm (Flip4Mac 2.0.1). It seems to be just an update, so you need to get and install Flip4Mac 2.0.0 from Microsoft first.

There are at least two solutions to decoding WMV3 video stream in OS X. But you know the first one is a horrible Microsoft implementation and the other one is a licensed codec package from Flip4Mac that you have to pay. Currently, neither can't do what everyone wants... WMV3 video + MP3 audio in AVI container, which is the biting deficiency, and compounded by the fact that some anime file releases use exactly THAT format thanks to the existence of WMV9 VCM in Windows. Ugh.

As for VLC, it needs an OPEN-SOURCE decoder. Specifically, it'll be adapting something that ffmpeg guys are doing. That team has been tackling WMV3, a.k.a. VC-1 / VC-3 / WMV9 stuff for about a year now. They put preliminary support in, what, February? Apparently, peeps have so far gotten the key frame to decode, but it freezes there.

So what I'm saying is, it's nice to donate to VLC guys, but help ffmpeg guys first.

Try WMV Player if you want an alternative to WMP on OS X. It lets Quicktime Player play any WMV file. It's not Open Source. It's not free. But it actually works better than WMP on a Mac.

I'm surprised more people aren't using Flip4mac's quicktime codec.
http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv.htm
You can play wmv files in quicktime as if you were on a pc using WMP classic.

I'm using a 6 year old dual 450mhz g4 and I'm getting 30 fps with 13 apps open.
I say it works much better than windows media player,mplayer or vlc.

I totally agree with you. While many people here say that VLC or mplayer are viable solutions to view WMV files, it's not easy to get a WMV3 codec for a non-MS OS. I use Mac OS X, and I'm currently trying out Flip4Mac, which is not working out too well. I think you can get a DLL for mplayer on Linux, but point is that it's these proprietary formats that cause people to stay with MS.

The latest QuickTime release has an Export setting for the iPod video. If you can get a video on to your computer that QuickTime can understand (which may require the use of things like Flip4Mac), you can definitely watch it on your iPod video.

Of course, there are other tools for re-encoding to H.264 and MPEG4, as well.

Actually, the link I posted before is misleading. I just did a quick search and didn't read the article. The product I saw in the magazine was for the bare bones player, not the studio pro or anything. You can get a better feel for what they are offering from the flip4mac site:
Just get the WMV player

You can try Flip4Mac's WMV Player ($9,99). It can play those WMVs that even Microsoft's own (disgraceful) WiMP for Mac can't.