countess richard (et.al.)

I tried a couple of the video clips on the page you cited (21 Dec 03 - 04:21 PM above). They are .wmv, Windows Media Video, files, and the "best" place to display them would be Windows Media Player. A couple that I saved to disk will not play in Quick Time, but will play in Real Player, if you have a recent enough version.

The recent versions of Quick Time and Real Player that I have on my Windows machine will both play .wav files. (Quick Time makes it obscurely inscrutible how you do it, since you have to "open movie," then select "audio files" and run a "convert file format" before the play starts. It might be simpler if .wav defaulted to QT on my machine.)

Although I am running WinXP, both of these programs, and Media Player, are available in Mac versions, and should provide very similar capabilities there. Compatibility with the various Mac OS versions is something that you need to determine for yourself, for your version. The best place to get info on what you can do with your Mac is at apple.com, at the "support" tab, and use the search function.

I have to concur with comments above about the proliferation of file types, and the "flash over substance" mindset of many web sites. Unfortunately, there is little choice - if you want to see the content on many of these sites you must have a player that recognizes what they offer.

I find Windows Media Player "least obnoxious," and most versatile, of the players I use occasionally; although I can't address any differences you may find in a Mac version appropriate to your OS.

I intensely dislike being forced, on rare occasions, to use Real Player (the latest version is now called Real/One) due to the extended "Shatner Moment" while it prevents you from opening the file you want while it displays a series of "demands" that you "upgrade" to it's latest versions, and then insists on connecting to it's own selection of media offerings before it allows you to open a file ... but it will play the .wmv and .wav files, and a couple of other more exotic ones.

Although I have it on my machine, I usually just skip looking at site content that demands Quick Time, for similar reasons. A particular problem with Quick Time content is that you (or at least I) nearly always get a demand to "install Quick Time" - independent of what version you already have - and it frequently will overwrite your installation with an older version if you're not very selective about permitting it to "do it's thing." (Some sites post .pdf files with the same sort of "auto-install pdf reader" demand.)

Quick Time also has the nasty habit of changing your defaults to make itself the default for everything it thinks it can play, every time you open it. I don't know if it's still true, but in some older versions allowing it to set itself as default once set it to always change any media file types back to QT any time you used another player. With one notorious version, the only way to get back to using another player was to uninstall QT.

(Because I use it so seldom, I can't say that Quick Time doesn't have a .wmv-capable codec available, so even it might be able to play the .wmv files if you really want to "work it." It does seem to be the Apple "core" player for media, but I think I'd dislike it even if that were not the case.)

One might hope that the evolution of media players might eventually lead to being able to use one program for all file types; however, at present, Microsoft is being sued (again) for trying to do just that with Media Player. It's all in the (advertising) $$$$$$$$.

John