MisterMe said:
As for the VLC comparison, well VLC is a wonderful effort by a nice kid. However, with Flip4Mac and the other QuickTime codecs I have installed, I can play any [porn] format I want in any QuickTime-compatible app without touching VLC. Only DRMed WMV escapes me.
I can't agree with that.
First of all, VLC was developped by a group of engineering students, and later on turned into an independant developping project, it wasn't done by "a nice kid". More info on
http://www.videolan.org.
This is an important point, because it also explains the tremendous amount of work put in it over the years. It goes beyond the homey-application built by a kiddo who happened to combine a couple of existing apps behind a single interface.
The program has been available for years now, way before most other solutions, and able to play very weird files. In my case, it meant running weirdly encoded video files on my iBook G3, when others would not.
I agree Flip 4 Mac, and maybe Perrian, are nice solutions, especially for those who do not have time to install codecs one by one. I am one of them, and I do use Flip 4 Mac. However, I wouldn't disregard the importance of a program like VLC, which tried to help us read video files from the PC world on our macs even when the mac was not as hype as nowadays. Pretty much like a Swiss-army knife, that you use when your preferred tool fails to help you.