Sorry this video cannot be played on a Macintosh?

[bonafide]

WTF?

I went to globeandmail.com (Canadian National Newspaper) and tried to view a video. It wouldn't load so I added the Windows Media player plug-in for Quicktime and it gave me this message:

"Sorry, this video cannot be played on a Macintosh"

What the hell?

Do I have to download windows media player for Mac in order to watch these videos?

 

[iBookG4user]

Have you tried installing flip4mac?

 

[Eidorian]

I've tried it in FireFox and Safari using modified user agents with no luck.

 

[WildCowboy]

Looks to me like it's running just fine using the Windows Media Player 9 plug-in on Safari 3.0.2 for me. It's old, unsupported software at this point, and I don't know how it behaves on Intel machines (I'm on PPC), but it's available here. Is that what you installed?

 

[Eidorian]

Looks to me like it's running just fine using the Windows Media Player 9 plug-in on Safari 3.0.2 for me. It's old, unsupported software at this point, and I don't know how it behaves on Intel machines (I'm on PPC), but it's available here. Is that what you installed?

It should work if you run Safari via Rosetta. I'm surprised that Flip4Mac can't handle it.

 

[mkrishnan]

Yeah, I noticed that the help page also discusses Mac compatibility extensively, but it suggests you use WMP over F4M. I don't have it installed on either of my computers anymore to test, though.

I also don't have any idea why F4M is not allowed to handle the media.

This is really turning into a no-win situation. If they use WMP, it works out of the box generally best on Windows, but it's dicey everywhere else, particularly on handhelds. if they use Flash, it'll work on pretty much every computer and very few handheld devices. Of course, it's not like Canadian cellular data pricing is conducive to watching video on the go, but....

The fact that it's becoming increasingly clear that Flash is going to have a very slow time, if it makes progress at all, into many web-capable cellphones is going to really screw everything up.

 

[Virgil-TB2]

WTF?

I went to globeandmail.com (Canadian National Newspaper) and tried to view a video. It wouldn't load so I added the Windows Media player plug-in for Quicktime and it gave me this message:

"Sorry, this video cannot be played on a Macintosh"

What the hell?

Do I have to download windows media player for Mac in order to watch these videos?

From the "Video Help" link (right beside the video you were trying to run) :

What are the requirements for video on Globeandmail.com?

If you're using Windows, we suggest using the latest version of Windows Media Player. On Macintosh you'll have access to the widest variety of video on Globeandmail.com if you're using Windows Media Player 9, however Microsoft now recommends Windows Media Components for Quicktime on Macintosh which provides a better experience but is incompatible with some of our video.

Translation:
"It's Windows Media Player format, and we don't really know/care how you would play it on your Mac or even why some of our videos don't seem to work sometimes but here's what Microsoft told us ... "

Judging by all the "Microsoft recommends..." language they are using on the site, they are an MS only shop that has no idea that anything exists outside of MS.

 

[bonafide]

It's pretty disappointing because I'm willing to bet the majority of the newspaper is created on a Mac.

 

[steve_hill4]

I find this with a lot of WMV content on websites. Not sure if F4M will eventually change, but seems to be something that's not restricted to a small selection of video these days, it's getting worse.

 

[mkrishnan]

I find this with a lot of WMV content on websites. Not sure if F4M will eventually change, but seems to be something that's not restricted to a small selection of video these days, it's getting worse.

I was somewhat disappointed that F4M has had MS's support for nearly 18 months, had native Intel compatibility more than a year ago, but hasn't done anything else, really, in terms of development in that time. I was hoping MS would provide them some kind of informatic aid to improve their product.