Windows Media Player 7 streams to the Mac

 

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Posted on 11 Oct 2000 at 14:37

Microsoft used the Streaming Media Europe conference in London to announce it will ship a beta version of its Windows Media Player 7 for the Mac within the next ten days.

The announcement, which came during a keynote speech by Will Poole, the company's vice president for digital media, gives Mac users access to content in both Windows Media and Windows Media Audio formats, both streamed and on disk. Although Microsoft had previously released a beta version of Media Player 6.3, it lacked many of the features of its Windows equivalent.

Media Player 7 has an identical interface and functionality to the Windows version with one exception: it cannot encode CD audio tracks into WMA format. According to Sean Alexander, technical product manager for Windows Media, this limitation reflects Microsoft's strategy with Windows Media. "Our aim is to produce clients that let the majority of Internet users access Windows Media content, but our primary focus for authoring is for Windows."

He added that Windows Media authoring solutions for the Mac were available from third parties including Terran Interactive, whose Media Cleaner Pro product supports the format. Microsoft is also open to licensing the format to other content creation tool providers.

As well as Windows Media, the Player supports other popular formats, including MPEG, AVI and MP3. For MP3 playback, Microsoft has licensed the Frauenhofer codec, widely regarded as giving the most accurate reproduction of sound.

The announcement, coming less than a day after Apple's release of a beta version of QuickTime 5.0 for Mac, emphasises the intense competition in the market for streaming media formats, which also includes Real Networks Real System 8. Streaming is a key area of potential growth because of the expected rapid growth of broadband Internet connectivity. The number of worldwide users connected to the Internet via fast lines (using DSL, cable modem or satellite links) is expected to grow from 9 million at present to 79 million by 2004, according to analysis company Informa Media.

With broadband access, more users are expected to watch streamed video content, and companies such as BT have already trialed video on demand services using ADSL and streaming software.

Author: Ian Betteridge