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MPEG-2 Streaming Client for Mac?

Posted by Cliff on from the that-age-old-question-of-availability dept.

foobar104 asks: "Macintouch posed an interesting question: is there any MPEG-2 streaming client software for the Mac, either for OS 9 or OS X? According to Kasenna, maker of the MediaBase streaming video platform, there isn't. You'd think Quicktime 5 would be able to stream MPEG-2 content, but sure enough the data sheet lists MPEG-1 only. Is Kasenna right?"

"Because I can't seem to figure out how to link directly to a story on Macintouch, here's the entire question.

David Hannah asked this interesting question about streaming video support on the Mac:

'I am a developer for the SGI and Linux Platforms, and have begun working with a product called MediaBase from Kasenna; it is a MPEG 1|2 Streaming Server. They are preparing to release MediaBaseXMP, which will support MPEG 4 as well. I was told by them that they do not support MPEG 2 streaming on the Macintosh, because there is no existing player that will accommodate this, including QuickTime 5. They said that QuickTime 6, when it releases will support MPEG 4, but until then, I cannot stream to a Macintosh without also having a QuickTime streaming server like the one provided by the Darwin project. Any truth to this? Are you aware of an MPEG-2 capable player that will stream on the Mac?'
Since there are a number of MPEG-2 software decoders for Windows, some of them plugins for Windows Media Player, it seems reasonable to think that something similar would exist for the Mac. Can anyone help?"

1 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Re:VideoLan by reverius · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have to second this... when reading the story, I immediately thought, "VLC has a Mac version, don't they?" VLC is the best streaming media player I've used, because they remain dedicated to an open source, cross platform streaming media solution.

    My only question is whether it can be used to play back the MPEG-2 streams we're talking about... I don't know whether they stream over HTTP or not.