[Live-devel] Windows Media Player?

[Dom Robinson]

(Interesting thread: very like the streamingmedia forum ones - I'm a
newbie and thought this list was pure tech ! : )

I doubt you could do anything to get msft to 'return' to focusing on
developing wmp. Their focus has sensibly gone to silverlight and frag
4 / TCP (http) now so there is no commercial sense in continuing to
'improve' wmp. RIAs and browsers are the only 'battle ground' now
'media players' are 'old hat'. The enterprise is going to switch on
flash like crazy this year with adobe adding multicast support and
that will flush wmp leaving silverlight (which already plays msft
multicast) as the only contender.

Even in IPTV world (set top boxes are moving that way too in readiness
for OTT) its moving to 'dynamic' and 'smooth' - rtsp and mpeg-ts are
quite 'cable and satellite' era but not very 'IP' era frankly. Yes the
new-kids are less mature, but no they are not going to go away and
media players are not going to have a 'come back'.

Actually, unlike  adobe, the msft video guys are very approachable -
even on a core level. Of course it helps if you don't go in with bulbs
of garlic (!)

By the way if you do mod rtsp implementation so it works with the
live555 implementation and others,  and manage to get the update
pushed into the win media player through windows update there would
then be a new probelm (assuming you are trying to stream mpeg-2 to
wmp):- The player normally tries to download codecs is hasn't got.
However if you have ever tried wmp on a machine with no dvd (or other
device which installs a *licensed* MPEG2 codec) wmp can't actually
download mpeg-2 from msft. This will be because its not something msft
are going to pay for (imagine the licensing costs due to mpeg by msft
if that was possible). Accordingly if you don't have MPEG-2 on you
ESPN intranet machines (or your client boxes if you are seriously
trying to stream MPEG2 to internet users(?)) even if you do get rtsp
working from live555 to wmp, you will have. a support nightmare for
decompression / codec installation.

Standards or not, that issue is actually caused by MPEG licensing and
not MSFT (unless you feel that MSFT is duty bound to pay MPEG for
license fees for us?)

I agree rtsp would have been nice had it been properly implemented
with wm9. But I think its like expecting msft to go back and support
windows 95 to want rtsp sorted in wmp at this point.

Writing an rstp plug in for IIS would be interesting - I don't know
what silverlight's rtsp capability is like? That really would be
interesting since the user interfacing could allow a transaction for
the end user to pay the mpeg-2 license fee on an automated install
(which media players generally struggle to handle)
.
</late night ramble>

Dom Robinson
D2Consulting

On 3/29/10, Ross Finlayson <finlayson at live555.com> wrote:
>>Unfortunately, as you note, I don't work for an open source
>>community project where I can stand on my ideals and thumb my nose
>>at those who can't.  I work in the real world of broken standards
>>and large corporations using those fissures to vie for intellectual
>>property rights while still trying to make my own very
>>time-sensitive software projects work appropriately in the real
>>world.  This project, regardless of my spite, ire, anger, ideals, or
>>bloviated bluster - contains Windows Media Player as a base
>>requirement - and no amount of pushback ill change that...
>>(oh, trust me .. I've tried..)
>
> Yes, I understand this.  That's why I noted that ESPN - being a large
> and influentual company - is in a position to possibly persuade
> Microsoft to fix Windows Media Player to make it handle your
> (standards compliant) streams.  I wish more companies would try this
> approach, rather than assuming that their only option is to try to
> modify their servers to work with Windows Media Player (something
> that might not even be possible, because Windows Media Player is a
> closed-source application whose inner workings are a mystery).
> --
>
> Ross Finlayson
> Live Networks, Inc.
> http://www.live555.com/
> _______________________________________________
> live-devel mailing list
> live-devel at lists.live555.com
> http://lists.live555.com/mailman/listinfo/live-devel
>


-- 
Dom Robinson