Help on playing WMV9

[djendon]

I'm a newbie with an Imac loaded with OSX 10.3.2 and I'm having a problem playing clips on WMV9 but only on certain sites. On these sites that wont play all I get are a bunch of symbols and what seems to me gibberish while on other sites I have no problem. Unfortunetly the problem sites outnumber the no-problem sites. I've searched thru the forum but I haven't seen anyone else with this problem hence my appeal. What can I do to overcome this problem? Quicktime and Realplayer are just fine. Any help would be greatly appreciated but please keep it simple as I'm an oldtimer and not not really attuned to computerese. Thanks in advance.

 

[MisterMe]

I'm a newbie with an Imac loaded with OSX 10.3.2 and I'm having a problem playing clips on WMV9 but only on certain sites. On these sites that wont play all I get are a bunch of symbols and what seems to me gibberish while on other sites I have no problem. Unfortunetly the problem sites outnumber the no-problem sites. I've searched thru the forum but I haven't seen anyone else with this problem hence my appeal. What can I do to overcome this problem? Quicktime and Realplayer are just fine. Any help would be greatly appreciated but please keep it simple as I'm an oldtimer and not not really attuned to computerese. Thanks in advance.

Your do not have a problem, you have a Macintosh. The thing that you have to understand is that Windows Media is a proprietary Microsoft format. IIRC, there are some very old files which can be played in QuickTime. Some newer files can be played in Windows Media Player 7, which was ported to MacOS X some years ago. Windows Media Player 9 has been ported to the Mac and can be downloaded from Microsoft's web site. However, the only way that you can expect to play every Windows Media file is to use WMP 10 on Windows. This is because Windows Media Player 10 has not yet been ported to the Mac.

 

[Makosuke]

On these sites that wont play all I get are a bunch of symbols and what seems to me gibberish while on other sites I have no problem.

By "gibberish" do you mean that a bunch of random text starts loadin inside your browser window, not that you get garbage iin the WMP viewer?

If the text is your problem, it has nothing to do with WMP compatibility; the problem is that the site is either not correctly identifying the WMP files by MIME type, and so your browser is guessing that they're really just text files and tries to display them, or your browser is misconfigured to display asf/asx files itself rather than handing them off to the actual WMP.

How to check that depends on the browser you're using, but you should be able to look up something like "file type association" on Google. If they're not streaming files, you can also do this: Instead of just clicking the link, either right click or control click, and select "Save target as..." (or whatever the option in your particular browser is), save the file that way, then play it manually. The file should download properly, and WMP will likely have no problem with it.

Worth a shot.

 

[djendon]

Thanks a million

Hey, guys, thanks a million for your input. I really appreciate it. I'm really a dumby when it comes to this puter stuff but hopefully maybe I'll get things straightened out. Again. my sincerest thanks.