MS Releases New Media Player Firefox Plugin

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."

Comments

Unlike the state of Florida or parts of it

[zappepcs]

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

Who needs Media Player?

[Seumas]

Thanks Microsoft, but I've already got VLC.

wmv files???

[simp]

/me looks around surprised. Everything is in flash players these days, isn't it? And if I want good quality video I download it from the newsgroups.

Damn, just broke the first rule of newsgroups.

Re:wmv files???

[blackmonday]

You know who's guilty of using crappy MS streaming media? None other than NPR.org. You have 2 choices - Windows Media or Real. How's that for crappy choices.

Re:wmv files???

[Abalamahalamatandra]

Just do what I do - decode the Javascript to find the actual location of the Real streams (I like the quality better than the WMV streams), then use command-line mplayer to stream it out and reencode it to MP3.

Now if Apple would just release tools or docs for creating enhanced podcast files for something other than a crappy command-line tool for OSX, I could make a rocking NPR podcast with skippable segments, but noooo...

Re:And

[Goaway]

Remember, if you can't find anything real to criticize Microsoft for, just make something up!

Re:Who cares?

[MankyD]

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.

Re:And

[mandelbr0t]

No need to make anything up. The litany of Bill Gates' sins could take up an entire year if read out loud. Then we move on to Ballmer...

When you're on top of the world, people always try to pull you down. In most cases, the people are justified.

Re:Meh

[TheCRAIGGERS]

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.

Fly on the Wall

[Tom]

Damn, that would've been an interesting fight to watch - the we-must-keep-our-media-format-dominance department vs. the we-must-keep-our-browser-dominance department. :-)

Or the better (free, as in choice) option

[VE3OGG]

Use VLC. Short of protected media (and really, I don't know too many people who use protected WMV), it seems to work wonderfully, and isn't dependent on a only two operating systems. If you want something more integrated, there is of course M-Player as well...

Re:Or the better (free, as in choice) option

[denis-The-menace]

I don't know too many people who use protected WMV
That's easy: Trojan writers.
There's this "feature" to install licenses for WMA/WMV files that permit the covert installation of Trojans, backdoors and other malware.

Stay away from .WMA/.MWV files like the plague they are!!!

Re:Or the better (free, as in choice) option

[fermion]

I now use VLC as a substitute for everything, even as a DVD player. All commercial players, WMP, Quicktime, Realplayer are suspect. They all have the ability to take over the computer and launch other apps, at least the browser. I know the integration can be helpful, but we are not in the 1980's. I do know how to open an application on my own.

Re:Or the better (free, as in choice) option

[Kalriath]

Actually, if Microsoft catches people installing trojans via the Licensing system, they revoke their license server. In case you weren't aware of what goes into getting the software to create protected WM* content:

1. Obtain Code Signing certificate from Certification Authority (Verisign, Thawte, or Geotrust only), which entails;
    a. Providing CA with registered company name, phone number and physical address
    b. Providing CA with copy of phone bill to allow them to call technical owner of said registered company
    c. Paying through the arse (about $500 USD) for certificate to be generated
2. Submit application to Microsoft. This is reviewed, then...
3. Microsoft sends a blank OCX file, which you then sign with your code signing certficate and return
4. Post back two copies of a signed contract which has your real name, registered company name, phone number, and physical address
    a. This contract says that you're dead meat if you distribute the software to ANYONE
5. Wait for MS legal to verify details and countersign agreement
6. Software is delivered to you via special extranet site which you probably didn't know existed
7. Software requires certificate to issue licenses which is generated by visiting a certain URL on WindowsMedia.com
8. Software can have its ability to issue licenses revoked at any time by revoking this certificate

As you can see, there's an assload of safeguards against what you say happens all the time, and Microsoft do revoke WMRM certificates for using them to install spyware or trojans. The contract then allows them to sue the person misusing the license manager SDK into oblivion as well, but I don't know whether they ever have or not.

If you're going to make a statement, make sure to back it up with real experiences or knowledge. Yes, I do happen to know how this process works. A company I work with had to go through it recently.

Re:Or the better (free, as in choice) option

[Breakfast Pants]

I'll just chime in with 'it happened to me'.

Re:Meh

[hpavc]

Its something they can point to in court that will save them a lot more than it cost to develop it.

Wonder who will get blamed for the arbitrary code executions in the thing, Firefox or Microsoft. Every vulnerability/bug media player has will likely point to Firefox, instantly overnight Firefox's vulnerability/bug list will jump in size.

Why now?

[MadJo]

Why would you need this plugin, when you have all sorts of different extensions dealing with this situation.
Like for instance: mediaplayerconnectivity.
Look you can use any player you like, and you don't need to have the browser open anymore, while playing the video.

I'm sorry Microsoft, but you are too little too late.

WOW!

[zappepcs]

I've got some servers that your management might be interested in, they're very expensive, but worth every penny, I promise!

Re:insightful??

[zappepcs]

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?

Re:Don't waste your time on the plugin like I did

[michrech]

I downloaded the plugin just to give it a try. Never had any problems with embedded video except at cnn.com I thought maybe the plugin would fix that problem. After installing and giving firefox a restart, it still won't work with the cnn.com and nothing else appears to be different. Not sure what the point of the plugin was, but don't waste your time with it like I did. It solved nothing from what it appears to me. Using Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Windows XP Pro SP2

Worked perfectly for me in Vista Enterprise. I didn't even have to restart Firefox (2.0.0.3). I'll be testing an XP machine I just put together shortly.

For those wishing not to use this update, for whatever your reasons, you can take three .dll files from an XP/WMP10 install and have working embedded video in Firefox under Vista.

Those three files are : npdsplay.dll, npdrmv2.dll, and npwmsdrm.dll

The last two are most likely optional, but I copied them anyway. The only drawback (if you can really call it that) is that the lower part of the embedded window are cut off by a few pixels, but it works perfectly fine.

Luckily for me, I'm surrounded by roughly 1800-ish XP machines, so I had no problems finding the files. I'm sure you all have someone you know with an XP machine that you could grab a copy of these files from.

This information is also available at various web pages if you look in Google.

I wonder if...

[Whuffo]

Do you suppose this special version of Media Player has a benefit to Microsoft? Of course it does; why waste programmers otherwise.

So what does Microsoft get from this - besides that ephemeral "protect WMV market share" stuff?

How about usage data? Media Player has been sending information back to MS for years; OS version, GUID, etc. Now they can also collect data about Firefox installs. I suspect that data has value to MS - and very well may be the reason for this unexpected release.

It's not as though Firefox users haven't been able to view WMV files, is it?

IE vs. WMP

[BRUTICUS]

could this imply that MS considers Media Player more important than Internet Explorer now? I mean I couldn't really see MS providing apple with a plugin for Quicktime. Is MS getting serious about the media player war...and MP3 players?

Zune 2.0

Re:Wow.

[TopSpin]

Did anyone see this coming? Yes. Two reasons: a.) flash is dominating online video because it's lightweight and cross platform and b.) Firefox can no longer be ignored.

I know a is true because (probably) like you, I'm watching a lot of online video, and I'm much more likely to do so if it's flash. I know b is true because clients of the company I'm contracting for have just (yesterday) decided to shift priorities and get a port of an existing ActiveX control running in Firefox, rather than develop the next release of the IE software.

Microsoft doesn't want WMV to become irrelevant simply because it doesn't work without IE. It doesn't address the cross platform issue but at least Firefox+Windows users won't be hindered.

We just saw a story here about Firefox holding 25% of the European market. You can't walk away from that when Adobe is lunching on your market share. No way.

Re:Don't waste your time on the plugin like I did

[Sam Ramji]

The reason the new plugin is better than just installing the three older files (which are the NPAPI compatibility libraries shipped with WMP 6.4 and previous) is that it expands the programmatic access to the WMP component - it's now fully scriptable from Firefox, with forward/back/pause features etc.

So use whichever one you like, but I am personally a Firefox user and prefer the experience with the new WMP 11 plugin. YMMV.

Also, in case you were wondering why it's a .exe instead of a .xpi, after talking with the guys at Mozilla we realized that the user experience for installing a .exe was better and additionally fit the Firefox model better. It's a plugin, not an extension; if you review the Adobe plugins they are also delivered as .exes.

Sam Ramji
Director, Open Source Software Lab
Microsoft Corporation