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QuickTime For RealNetworks

Posted by timothy on from the could-you-please-pass-some-sorenson? dept.

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.

2 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Destined to be the most annoying thing ever by pen · · Score: 5
    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?

    --

  2. Realserver or player? by GrenDel+Fuego · · Score: 5

    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.