Is The QuickTime Plugin Still Relevant Online?

Seen this lately?We all know that love it, or hate it, Flash is the video format of choice for video sharing sites like YouTube. Of course, that's not entirely accurate since more and more files are really h.264 or MPEG-4, wrapped in flash. So when we say flash is the "format" of choice, we really mean flash is the required player of choice.

What about Quicktime as the player of choice? Five or ten years ago, it looked like QuickTime, Real Player, and Windows Media would slug it out for online dominance. Now, for better or worse, we've all more or less agreed that h.264 is the codec du jour, and if you want to allow users to put annoying captions over it, or need to pay the bills with video ads, then you'll wrap in something requiring a flash player.

When's the last time you encountered a site that had content designed to play back in the browser through the QuickTime plugin? There are three places where this still seems to happen: 1. The Apple Website (although this is now more html 5, embedded video-driven), education sites (usually neglected ones), and motion graphics / video editors demo reels, generally to showcase the quality of their product.

Is anyone out there embedding video for QuickTime playback exclusively? Have third party players/hosting sites made the concept of hosting your own video obsolete?

When is Mac Compatible NOT Mac Compatible?

Overdrive.com has had their name in the news recently, as they will be one of the suppliers for content to the new Sony Daily Reader. Sometime back, I looked into Overdrive's arrangement with local libraries. Essentially, if you're a member of a participating library, and there's an audiobook you'd like to listen to, you can "check it out" digitally. The Overdrive software then loads the book onto your computer. Pretty slick, right?

Over the summer Overdrive announced they were bringing their media management app to the Mac. Also, you can now load certain audiobooks into your iPod, and/or burn to CD. There's just one catch: Those functions still require a PC. Yes, to load an audiobook onto your iPod, you will need to use a PC. In fact, in playing with the software, it looks like the Mac version will only play mp3 audio books (very few of those) and can transfer those to an iPod, or burn them to CD.

In short, it's a useless piece of software on the Mac, that merely duplicates what you can already do with iTunes.  The problem stems from the fact they are using wma files that have drm wrappers to make the service work. You can argue the issue is with WMA and not Overdrive, but why bother to have a Mac version, when there's a laughably small selection of titles that are even compatible?

Here's the word from Overdrive's support folks:

The Mac version of OverDrive Media Console allows for the download of titles in the OverDrive MP3 Audiobook format, and can also be used to transfer the MP3 Audiobook titles to an iPod.  The Mac version of OverDrive Media Console also allows you to bookmark the during playback, as well as navigate the title using Media Markers.  

It's disappointing because we were looking forward to this, and even wanted to give it the coveted "Website of the week" distinction. Alas, we'll have to wait.