Microsoft has some good news for movie fans. If you want to watch .mov files in Windows 7 (read our full Windows 7 review), you don't need to install Apple's QuickTime. Bye, bye annoying system tray icon! Adios, Apple update!
The support for .mov files was mentioned deep in a long list of changes that are coming to the Windows 7 Release Candidate.
On the Engineering Windows 7 blog, in a post entitled 'Some changes since beta for the RC', Chaitanya Sareena, Senior Program Manager on the Core User Experience team, talks up improved playback support for video content from digital camcorders and cameras:
"We've since added support for Windows Media Player to natively support the .mov files used to capture video for many common digital cameras," writes Sareena.
While this may delight owners of cameras which output in the .mov format, it's also good news for anyone who enjoys watching movies on their PC, as movie trailers, particularly those on Apple Movie Trailers, come in .mov format, and so require QuickTime (or a freeware player such as VLC) to view.
Windows users who install QuickTime are then nagged with pop-ups from the Apple update software prompting them to install other Apple software such as iTunes and Safari.
And while this move brings wider camera support, and rids Windows users of those annoying nag screens, it also has the added benefit for Microsoft of making one Apple application less necessary to download.
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Your comments (16) Click to add a new comment
cyberotechradar
October 13th
16. The .mov format provided within Windows 7 only suits a very limited set of movie files common pretty much exclusively on digital cameras and that alone doesn't really solve the ongoing problems faced by originators, distributors and consumers of media products wrapped in Apple's 'one size kinda fits all' .mov file format.
In any case, the Windows Media player does support most standard .mov exported files already.
The problem is not so much offline viewing as that of online viewing. Oh, and BTW QT Player does support a full screen view without the Pro Registration.
I would most definitely agree that making the installation of the QT plugin as painless and as strictly pertinent as say installing the Flash plugin would be great;The only real need for iTunes is if you are buying from the iTunes store. Furthermore only Flash video comes anywhere near as close to being as truly cross platform as QuickTime does.
In short, some sort of supporting framework / dynamic library will continue to be needed on Windows 7 for the playing of the various kinds of cross platform media content both online and offline , Flash, QT, DivX and a few more besides.
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ghynson
March 24th
15. It's about friggin time,..
Quicktime ranks right up there with microwaving a turd straight from Mr. Jobs poobutt.
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tracyann
March 6th
14. The ability to play .mov files without Apples Quicktime has been built into Linux for several years. Microsoft has finally caught up.
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a.n.other
February 28th
13. It's time Apple and MS learned from VLC player, The king of Video Players!
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worldtvpc
February 27th
12. Quicktime is the worst product from Apple. If I were them I would have removed it ages ago, but they need a media program to round out OSx. It doesn't help that they tiered the program to a free and paid version with no bloody fullscreen support in the free support.
Say what you will about Microsoft, but at least they weren't that money grubbing with Windows media player - which has problems too.
Overall I say ditch quicktime and windows media player and go for VLC.
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mcphooey
February 27th
11. It's not Apple bashing, it is true. Quicktime is a really annoying. The install Tries to put in iTunes & associate everything, the auto update pops up all the time and is added as a startup service, it is buggy and has a poor interface. Don't get me wrong, theres lots of great Apple software out there but this is not one of them and has needed updating for a long time.
And webgodjj - as for saying WMP is a joke, it really isn't. Add a couple of codecs like coreAVC and it plays ANYTHING. Though better players are available and it doesn't support h.264 hardware (software only) it just works with no hassle.
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