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QuickTime
Just launch QuickTime Player, and there's no telling where you're
likely to land. The Player may whisk you to the Moon or perhaps to
an exotic location on this planet. Take you on a virtual field
trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Or treat
you to the latest news, movie trailers, music videos, HBO series
or PBS specials.
That's because QuickTime Player takes advantage of the latest
video compression technology. It's called H.264, and it's an
important new industry standard that's quickly garnered widespread
support. Chosen as the industry-standard codec for 3GPP (mobile
multimedia), MPEG-4 HD-DVD and Blu-ray, H.264 represents the next
generation of video for everything from mobile multimedia to
high-definition playback. H.264 icon.
The new QuickTime Player not only delivers startling quality, but
it's easier to use than ever. It requires no set up for content
that streams over the network. Instead, QuickTime Player
automatically determines your system's connection speed and
chooses the highest quality stream for the amount of bandwidth you
have available. And if you ever lose a connection while watching
streaming video, QuickTime Player automatically reconnects. Now,
that's convenience.
Do you think great video deserves great audio? We do, too. And
QuickTime Player delivers truly outstanding multi-channel audio.
In fact, it provides you with up to 24 channels of audio, turning
your home office into a home theater. Pop in a movie or video game
that features surround sound and prepare to be amazed at the
heightened audio experience you'll enjoy on your computer equipped
with surround-sound speakers. A really good sport, QuickTime
Player supports a wide-range of industry-standard audio formats,
including AIFF, WAV, MOV, MP4 (AAC only) and AAC/ADTS.
After 10 years and with millions of users worldwide, Apple's
QuickTime player still provides one of the best solutions for
digital media. Whether you're watching streaming movie trailers
online or diving headlong into QuickTime as a creation platform,
you'll find little to quibble about in this veteran player. Its
few quirks are quickly offset by the elegant Apple interface and
the top-notch audio/video playback quality.
QuickTime comes in two varieties. The free standard player handles
popular audio, graphic, and video formats, including the
much-ballyhooed H.264 and MPEG-4. Also, for $29.95, you can
upgrade to the content-creation-friendly Pro version, which adds
features such as full-screen playback, easy editing, H.264/MPEG-4
production, and the ability to save movies from the Web. MPEG-2
support is available, but at an additional cost of $19.95.
High-definition content looks impressive with the new H.264 codec,
but hardly better than with similar offerings from Microsoft. The
stylish transport controls and the friendly layout work well.
Inclusion of the autoupdate and automatic-network-detection
features make getting started and staying current easy.
Overall, QuickTime continues to be a must-have for anyone surfing
the Web or looking to experience the best in digital media.
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