Vista and Online Video Viewing

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In this second part of a five-part series, you'll learn how Vista handles the challenge of online video, and some interesting tips and tricks to make your web viewing experience more pleasant. It is excerpted from chapter four of the book Windows Vista Annoyances: Tips, Secrets, and Hacks for the Cranky Consumer, written by David A. Karp (O'Reilly, 2008; ISBN: 0596527624). Copyright © 2008 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission from the publisher. Available from booksellers or direct from O'Reilly Media.

Handling Online Video

Ideally, video should be no different than any other web content, but when was the last time you had trouble viewing static text and still images, or even hearing audio, in web pages? But videos are different, and for several reasons:

1. The enormous size of video files forces web publishers to employ a series of tricks, such as nonstandard streaming protocols, dedicated video servers, and special browser plug-ins, to bring video to your desktop.
   
2. The large number of competing formats means that you must have at least a half-dozen browser plug-ins—not to mention all the required codecs, described earlier in this chapter—in order to play most online video. 
    
3. The aforementioned plug-ins and codecs must be updated to keep up with the technology. 
    
4. Online video publishers—particularly news organizations—often jury-rig their content to make it difficult or impossible to download to your hard disk. This means they rely more heavily on special plug-ins, JavaScript, and other hand-waving, all of which increase the likelihood that you’ll run into a problem when you watch their videos.

All of this simply means that playing and downloading online video can be a frustrating experience if you don’t know about a few tools and tricks.

First and foremost, make sure you have the latest versions of these four major plug-ins installed in each web browser you use.  

Plug-in	Download from	Filename(s) for IE	Filename(s) for Firefox and SeaMonkey
Quicktime	www.quicktime.com	qtplugin.ocx	npqtplugin.dll
			npqtpluginx.dll
RealPlayer	www.real.com	rmoc3260.dll	nppl3260.dll
			nprpjplug.dll
Shockwave Flash	www.adobe.com	flash9.ocx	npswf32.dll
Windows Media Player	www.microsoft.com	wmp.dll	npdsplay.dll
		msdxm.ocx	npwmsdrm.dll

To see a list of plug-ins that are installed in Internet Explorer, open IE, click the Tools drop-down, and select Internet Options. Choose the Programs tab, click Manage add-ons, and then from the Show drop-down, select Add-ons that run without requiring permission. In the Settings box, you can also disable any plug-in you suspect might be causing playback problems, or, if you’re lucky, you may be able to go to Control Panel ➝ Programs and Features to uninstall the plug-in completely.

In Mozilla Firefox (and Mozilla SeaMonkey), just typeabout:pluginsin the address bar and press Enter to see a list of installed plug-ins. (Note that plug-ins, used to view embedded content, are indeed different from extensions, which only add features to the browser interface.) Like IE, Mozilla plug-ins can be uninstalled from Control Panel.

Next: Rewind or Fast-Forward Streaming Video >>
 

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This article is excerpted from chapter four of the book Windows Vista Annoyances: Tips, Secrets, and Hacks for the Cranky Consumer, written by David A. Karp (O'Reilly, 2008; ISBN: 0596527624). Check it out today at your favorite bookstore. Buy this book now.