Just wondering if virtual PC is fast enough to run windows meda player content including WMV3. I've been having a lot of trouble getting any of this to run on my Mac, and also, there is no windows media player 10 for mac, so DRM is out of the question. If anybody has any experience with running high def windows media video and such through VPC I would appreciate your input. Thanks
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Virtual PC And Windows Media Player Question
- Thread starter jumpman25
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I tried running WMP in VPC once...and quickly gave up. It took 5 minutes just to start up; video was jittery and unstable; sound had all kinds of pops and clicks and was generally tough to bear listening to. Microsoft has a warning somewhere on their VPC page that advises against running WMP under VPC because it just doesn't work very well.
I upgraded WMP on my installation of VPC 7 to WMP 10. It is slow, but usable. Though it fails miserably to meet the recommended configuration for WMP 10, VPC 7 on my 2 GHz PM G5 easily fulfills the minimum requirements for the media player as listed on WMP 10's web site. Nowhere on the VPC 7 website is there a warning about running WMP.wrldwzrd89 said:
You'll need a fast computer to get anything resembling watchable video out of it, but it works fine. I've played a few video clips on my DP 2.0 G5 and they look fine (320X240), so you shouldn't have any problems on your machine. I haven't tried any big clips, however, so I don't know how much it'll handle before the frame rate falls apart.
Incidentally, I've also tried using WMP Classic or whatever the freeware player that Windows folks always seem to recommend is called, but it was useless--even on very small, low compression (meaning easy to decompress) clips it stuttered badly where the MS-standard WMP worked fine. I don't know if it's less efficient, or if there's just something in the way that it's programmed that doesn't like VPC, but stick to the MS app.
Incidentally, I've also tried using WMP Classic or whatever the freeware player that Windows folks always seem to recommend is called, but it was useless--even on very small, low compression (meaning easy to decompress) clips it stuttered badly where the MS-standard WMP worked fine. I don't know if it's less efficient, or if there's just something in the way that it's programmed that doesn't like VPC, but stick to the MS app.
Sound on VPC (for me) is awful, it skips constantly, even when playing MIDI's, so if your movies have sound I can't speak kindly (from experience) about VPC.