Yes and no. Microsoft makes a Windows Media Player for the Mac and there is also a cross platform, open source, free player called VLC that works very well on the Mac. I recommend VLC for any Mac users who have trouble playing certain video files in Quicktime. It will play 95% of everything out there. Except both it and the Mac Windows Media Player do not support wmv videos encoded with the following codecs: WMV3, Indeo Video v3 (IV32), or Indeo Video v4-5 (IV41)(IV51). I rarely run across these codecs however. I guess lack of WMV3 is probably the biggest problem. There is no non-Windows way to play a WMV3 encoded movie that I know of.
There is a retail software product called flip4mac that claims to add .wmv support to Quicktime (it's a $9.99 plug-in) but I'm pretty sure it just brings Quicktime up to what VLC can do already (in other words I don't think it can do WMV3 either - but there is some chance I am wrong on this.)
Another great thing about VLC is that it lets you save anything you can play to a file. So it will let you capture any video stream, even when other video players would respect the various "do not allowing saving of this file" flags set in the stream. Similarly, VLC will also allow you to fast forward through the FBI warnings and previews on DVDs.
You can download the latest VLC for Mac OS X here.
But now that I've said all that about VLC I have to admit that it won't play the above video on the Mac (pretty rare.) But the latest Windows Media Player will. You can download it for free here. Still, I always try VLC first, but I guess that's mostly a religious decision.
Is there a cross platform that will support the Oxford English Dictionary CD-Rom to make it Mac compatible ? Oxford says no but Mac others say maybe.
I quick google seems to indicate that Version 2 of the CD (OED2 CD-ROM) will run under Classic (i.e., under the old pre OS X Mac operating system which can be installed inside of Mac OS X - but it isn't installed by default.)
The newer Version 3 of the OED is Windows only. You could run it inside of Virtual PC on the Mac, but you'd still need to own a copy of Windows, so this isn't really "running it on the Mac".
HTH.
Helps. Means I can have the new OED without buying a new laptop; the irritation of having Virtual PC aside. Small price to pay for owning the operating system, word part at least, of the English speaking mind. Thanks.
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There is a retail software product called flip4mac that claims to add .wmv support to Quicktime (it's a $9.99 plug-in) but I'm pretty sure it just brings Quicktime up to what VLC can do already (in other words I don't think it can do WMV3 either - but there is some chance I am wrong on this.)
Another great thing about VLC is that it lets you save anything you can play to a file. So it will let you capture any video stream, even when other video players would respect the various "do not allowing saving of this file" flags set in the stream. Similarly, VLC will also allow you to fast forward through the FBI warnings and previews on DVDs.
You can download the latest VLC for Mac OS X here.
But now that I've said all that about VLC I have to admit that it won't play the above video on the Mac (pretty rare.) But the latest Windows Media Player will. You can download it for free here. Still, I always try VLC first, but I guess that's mostly a religious decision.
- jim 11-29-2005 8:45 pm
Is there a cross platform that will support the Oxford English Dictionary CD-Rom to make it Mac compatible ? Oxford says no but Mac others say maybe.
- Vern (guest) 11-30-2005 7:49 am [add a comment]
I quick google seems to indicate that Version 2 of the CD (OED2 CD-ROM) will run under Classic (i.e., under the old pre OS X Mac operating system which can be installed inside of Mac OS X - but it isn't installed by default.)
The newer Version 3 of the OED is Windows only. You could run it inside of Virtual PC on the Mac, but you'd still need to own a copy of Windows, so this isn't really "running it on the Mac".
HTH.
- jim 11-30-2005 8:34 pm [add a comment]
Helps. Means I can have the new OED without buying a new laptop; the irritation of having Virtual PC aside. Small price to pay for owning the operating system, word part at least, of the English speaking mind. Thanks.
- Vern (guest) 11-30-2005 8:57 pm [add a comment] [edit]