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MS Releases New Media Player Firefox Plugin

Posted by kdawson on from the windows-only dept.

SilentChris writes "Microsoft today released a new Media Player plugin for Firefox that resolves the problems users of the older version were experiencing. According to the company's Port 25 blog, it's backwards compatible with Windows Media Player 6.4. The plugin is for Windows XP and Vista only, but if you have to watch WMV video at least it's less likely to crash your browser."

4 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Unlike the state of Florida or parts of it by zappepcs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I simply say NO to .wmv files... meh, no big loss so far as I can tell.

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  2. Re:Who cares? by MankyD · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With most online videos using flash based video players, who really cares that they even released this plug-in?
    I would bet this is partly in response to that shift. For a little while at least, WMP was doing quite well on the web - it certainly beat out Real Player. Now that Flash has mature video capabilities and works/worked better in Firefox (and will in other browsers), many people have moved away from WMP.
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  3. Re:Meh by TheCRAIGGERS · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So.... you're expecting Microsoft to spend money to help out the competition?

    Yes, usually format owners want their format to be usable on as many platforms as possible. However, in this case, they already have dominance. I don't see how supporting Linux is going to help them at all, and they probably see it the same way.

    The flip side is there probably aren't too many Linux users out there that would use it anyway, especially when mplayer works just fine usually. I know I wouldn't use it.

  4. Re:insightful?? by zappepcs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'll give it a go

    1 - I didn't mod the comment up
    2 - I'm not a tool
    3 - I didn't bash MS, I simply said I don't roll that way. I figure if someone can't put their content out in at least two formats they didn't really want anyone to see it anyway. You see, HTML and your web browsing experience is protected by a general compliance with standards. With video content there are too many standards. I think that MPEG is a good standard, consequently I ignore those pesky .wmv and most of the .mov files too. Its nice that people can make up their own formats for stuff, but I'm also happy to not view it if I have to load their special player... oh well.

    There! Feel better? I didn't even mention Mi^H^H those people from Redmond.

    Now, if you want a bit more thought, do you get this angry when someone says they don't like Bridgestone tires?

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