Safari and Windows Media Plug-in

Question

Level 2

152 points

Safari and Windows Media Plug-in

Can someone explain how I might get this radio station to play? When I try I get the error: "Cannot open the file. Verify the path and file name are correct and try again."

CBC Radio Victoria Streaming Windows Media:
http://www.cbc.ca/listen/streams/r1victoria32.html

I have the latest versions of Windows Media Player 9 and Safari.

Posted on Sep 14, 2005 11:55 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Rob Broadbent Author

Level 2

152 points

Sep 15, 2005 2:06 PM in response to Rob Broadbent

Anyone else seeing this error?

Reply

Answer 2

Kjolner

Level 2

354 points

Sep 15, 2005 10:18 PM in response to Rob Broadbent

Unfotunately I canot help you, but I see you have window mediaplayer 9?
how did you do that. I am trying very hard to instal so on my mac, but everytime iphoto pops up and another window say it is an invalid file! Can you help me? Ivar.

Reply

Answer 3

Sep 16, 2005 11:10 AM in response to Rob Broadbent

I also get that error message from time to time.

From what I understand, Windows media has some kind of proprietary licensing system that grants the WM Player permission to only play certain licensed files. Unfortunately, Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X only supports version 1 licenses. This means that, as mac users, we are only allowed to play some protected files, but not others.

Check the WMP site FAQ page for further info.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/software/Macintosh/osx/faq.aspx?se ction=TOPISSUES&question=TOPISSUES3#NAME_TOPISSUES

What I usually do in situations like this is Control-Click and choose "View Source" to look at the source code, copy the file path of the file I'm looking to play-
The file you're tying to play is-

http://origin.www.cbc.ca/mrl2/livemedia/cbcr1-victoria.asx

and paste it into the VLC Player:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

VLC is open source, plays just about anything and is free to boot.
Hope that helps.

Reply

Answer 4

Rob Broadbent Author

Level 2

152 points

Sep 16, 2005 11:36 AM in response to Mark Evans

Thanks for the info. I have VLC so I'll try that. My patients for Windows Media has grown very thin. Even RealPlayer works better (shudder). How can the Mac dev's at Microsoft allow the Mac version of Windows Media Player to be so incredibly outdated and broken? It's pathetic. Perhaps with the exception of Office, it seems MS always has to release Mac versions of it's software that are either broken, one version behind, or lacking in feature parity. Is it that the MS dev's can't figure out how to program on other platforms? No. I guess it's just MS's way to attempt to keep people on Windows. What a buch of Looooosers!

Reply

Answer 5

Sep 16, 2005 3:14 PM in response to Kjolner

Ivar, the problem with installing WMP on OSX Tiger is that Stuffit Expander is not included in Tiger. If you download and install it, there should be no problem installing WMP...

Reply

Answer 6

Nov 23, 2005 2:52 PM in response to Mark Evans

I also get that error message from time to time.

From what I understand, Windows media has some kind
of proprietary licensing system that grants the WM
Player permission to only play certain licensed
files. Unfortunately, Windows Media Player 9 for Mac
OS X only supports version 1 licenses. This means
that, as mac users, we are only allowed to play some
protected files, but not others.

Check the WMP site FAQ page for further info.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/software
/Macintosh/osx/faq.aspx?section=TOPISSUES&question=TOP
ISSUES3#NAME_TOPISSUES

What I usually do in situations like this is
Control-Click and choose "View Source" to look at the
source code, copy the file path of the file I'm
looking to play-
The file you're tying to play is-

http://origin.www.cbc.ca/mrl2/livemedia/cbcr1-victoria
.asx

and paste it into the VLC Player:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

VLC is open source, plays just about anything and is
free to boot.
Hope that helps.

I read your reply with interest since I am getting the same error message when trying to click on Earthlink Video News stories. Efforts to get a solution from Earthlink have been fruitless. Copying the source code and then pasting it into VLC or Windows Media Player have not worked. Video News WILL run using Internet Explorer. There are 3 plugins for WMP that do not show up in Safari:
video/x-ms-asf-plugin
application/x-mplayer2
application/asx

Unable to locate any of these plugins on Microsoft or Apple websites.

PowerMac 867 MHz Mac OS X (10.2.x)

Reply

Answer 7

iBod

Level 7

29,345 points

Nov 24, 2005 12:35 PM in response to J.Michael

Hi J.,

For what it's worth, I have no problems watching videos at Earhlink news:

The only Microsoft plugin I installed was from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=windowsmedia

Reply