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Windows Media Components for QuickTime

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WMV Player
Developer(s)Flip4Mac
Operating systemMac OS X
TypeMultimedia framework plug-in
WebsiteLink

Windows Media Components for QuickTime, also known as Flip4Mac WMV Player by Telestream, Inc. is one of the few commercial products that allow playback of Microsoft's proprietary audio and video codecs inside QuickTime for Mac OS X.

It allows playback of:

It also includes a web browser plug-in to allow playback of embedded Windows Media files in web pages.

With the components installed, any QuickTime-compatible application is able to directly play WMV content. This includes the official QuickTime Player by Apple as well as countless third party players, like NicePlayer. It even has a clever mechanism allowing the Windows Media files to be opened in QuickTime Player when double clicked. An application called WMV Player in the Applications folder is the program the Windows media are associated with. When a file is double clicked, WMV Player lauches and immediately tells QuickTime Player to open the file, providing a transparent experience for the end user. In addition to this, the file icons in WMV Player are done in the same style as the QuickTime Player icons, further encouraging the illusion that they are QuickTime Player files.

On 2006-01-12, Microsoft discontinued Windows Media Player for Mac OS X and began distributing a free version of WMV Player as Windows Media Components for QuickTime on their website[1].

Timeline

  • As of July 8, 2006, Flip4Mac did not officially run on Intel-based Macs.
  • As of July 15, 2006, version 2.1 of Flip4Mac now supported Windows Media Player 10 content, which was previously inaccessible to Macintosh users. This newer version also supports Intel-based Macs.
  • As of July 27, 2006, version 2.1 is a non-beta release of the Universal Binary format for OS X.

See also