QuickTime For RealNetworks

PeterPan writes: "QuickTime for RealNetworks 'RealNetworks has licensed Apple intellectual property for streaming digital video and audio over the Internet in QuickTime. RealServer 8 now supports delivery of QuickTime content to QuickTime players.'" It'd be great to be able to actually watch high-quality QuickTime clips without either proprietary hardware / software combinations or jerky (or space-hogging) downcoversions.

Comments

It's not the server, stupid

[i, Mac]

Apple has never intended to make any money on its streaming server software, evidenced by the fact that while MS and Real charge out the nose for theirs, Apple gives away the whole server, with source to boot.

So for Apple, they get a major boon: RealServer, which is an established media server for many businesses, will now also stream QT files. That means the likelihood of sites offering QT streams will go up, which means more people will use the Quicktime software to view those streams. RealServer gets the ability to cater to millions more people since they can now stream to a client that is included in every copy of Mac OS on every Macintosh sold in the past year or so (and there's quite a few of those, believe me) plus another slew of clients on Windows.

Frankly, I think Apple is making a good move here. The more people that integrate QT streaming into their apps, the more QT becomes an entrenched standard.

And for the Qt-on-Linux people: I am almost sure that Apple has looked and continues to look at Quicktime on Linux. It's a shoe-in considering the porting efforts to Darwin.. but consider the effort needed to port QT to Linux. First of all, the video system in Linux needs much work to get it up to the same speed as proprietary systems. Moreover, which windowing system: should they call it kQuicktime or gQuicktime?

But the most important question: how many of you asking for Quicktime on Linux would be satisfied if that happened? Or would the new Question of the Day on Slashdot be: When is Apple going to Open Source Quicktime for Linux? It's not GPL, so why should I use it? etc...

If some of us would be thankful for the efforts the proprietary software community HAS made to work with and join the Open Source movement, instead of being so damn jaded and ungrateful, perhaps these companies would be motivated to join the cause wholeheartedly.

Instead most of us can't accept the fact that companies, like people, change and can mend their ways. Most of us see green and hate it. Most of us can't get beyond our petty prejudices to see the benefits some of these companies bring.

And until then Linux and the like will continue to be a fringe OS, because we refuse to work with others to improve ourselves.

Get off your high horse and write a thank you to IBM's Open Source advocate. Or Apple's.. check the Darwin list, there are many of them at Apple.

Some of you are just so self-righteous it's sickening.

Re:Destined to be the most annoying thing ever

[pen]

I'm not a VOD programmer (whatever that is), so I can't argue with your statement, but I'll say this. Windows Media Player is probably the best program for playing streaming video I've seen to date. It isn't innovative(tm) or special -- it just doesn't do stuff I didn't ask it to do over and over and over again. And it has a fairly standard interface that doesn't flake.

Here's the problem. Windows Media, to the best of my knowledge, can only be streamed from boxes running NT. I've yet to hear of a Windows Media streaming server that works on something else.

Now, the question that has been begging for an answer. What's wrong with MPEG? Why can I not just stream MPEG files? All three of the major players understand it, it is automatically streamable, using any HTTPD, so why the rush to use proprietory software? I can understand most websites going with the "trustable" solution, but I've yet to see a single website use MPEG for streaming. Is there a special problem, and does the MPEG group plan on solving it anytime soon?

--

QT for linux, why the windows version is harsh....

[Brat Food]

QT for osX does NOT use quartz, as illustrated on this page , as all the graphics layers (quicktime / opengl / quartz ) are essentially 'plugins' to the whole graphics layer. Aqua, the interface, sits at the topmost level, abtracted from the core graphics technology. This architecture lends itself to having other imaging tech ported to it, like, say, directX =) for more info, try here.

What does that all mean? It means QT on linux almost guarenteed (why wouldnt apple want that market?)

Also, i remember reading a few years back that Quicktime for windows is an almost complete port of the mac os. I do not recall to what extent it was, or the validity of my memory, but its food for thought...certainly would be a huge engeneering effort(as i recall, QT uses allmost all macOS toolbox api's)

I dont know if anyone reading this has seen it, but the new UI for quicktime on osX is way better then its current incarnation. You can see it here

As far as Apple liscensing[sp] QT pieces, its a win win i think. If MS really just got windows media player support, then it seems like the right thing to do to be in that camp as well.

Realserver or player?

[GrenDel Fuego]

From the looks of this, realSERVER 8.0 will allow the SERVING of quicktime files. It dosen't mention anything (at least not specifcally) about realplayer being able to play quicktime movies. This means we still will not be able to view quicktime 4 movies under linux.

As for quicktime serving, The quicktime server software is already available for free for linux, and from what I've heard from people who've run real server, real server itself is a pain in the ass.

This however does not mean that you can encode from within linux. The encoding itself must be done on a macintosh (or possible windows, i'm not sure), due to the unavailability of the codecs for linux. I'm not sure how realserver handles the encoding, but this could bring qt encoding to other platforms.

Didn't I read a few months ago that Real also licensed Windows Media for their servers as well? I suppose more companies will be buying real server.

I suppose we'll have to see how this turns out, but I think it's basically going to expand an already too big streaming company.