Playing .WMV

[mastephens]

I have used PC's all of my life and now that I have a Mac, I tend to be lost. What is the best program to play multiple video formats on the Mac? If I have to buy it that is alright, but I want something that will do the job right.

 

[Kristo]

http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net/

or

http://www.videolan.org/

will pretty much sort you out.

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

Unfortunately, there is no proper alternative for WMVs on the Mac. Blame Microsoft, 'cause WMP for Mac sucks ass...There's also this, I suppose. Haven't really tried it, though.

 

[Galvatron]

For windows media files, I found this http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv.htm the $10 player is perfect. It plays all windows media files through quicktime, and I think is well worth the money.

 

[Braddlac]

i just use windows media player on my mac...works pretty well

 

[Nasty_Savage]

Seconded:
http://www.videolan.org/

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

VLC doesn't play the later WMV types... But for everything else, I rather like it.

 

[Xephian]

Windows Media Player is really slow on my Mac campared to Quicktime.

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

Windows Media Player is really slow on my Mac campared to Quicktime.

"Really slow" doesn't even begin to describe it. Besides, have you ever watched a clip in WMP for Mac and then watched the same clip in the real WMP? The decoding in the former really, *really*, sucks. I tried the Flip4Mac plugin, and the image quality was a whole lot better. Less stuttering, too, and the searching and pause functions actually work, which is more than can be said about WMP for Mac. I'm quite convinced that WMP is actually crippled intentionally, because nobody skilled enough to make an application like that even compile properly is also skilled enough to make it suck a lot less. Thusly, they must have crippled it on purpose.