Clarification of Answer by
watershed-ga
on
05 Nov 2002 23:48 PST
Hello Jbf,
Well, I do understand what you are getting at. According to
StatMarket (www.statmarket.com) the top 3 combinations of operating
system and browser as of October 24th are:
Combination Global Usage Share
IE 6.0-Windows XP 19.68%
IE 6.0-Windows98 10.54%
IE 5.0-Windows98 8.26%
Now, Windows XP comes with Windows Media Player 8 which has played
almost everything I have come across as far as Windows Media
compatible content is concerned. However, in the options of Windows
Media Player 8 is a tab that says "Download Codecs Automatically",
which is checked by default. Which means that it whenever it
encounters content it cannot play, it will check its Internet database
to see if there are any Codecs which match the content it is trying to
play. A Codec is much like a .dll for audio and video content. There
are literally hundreds of formats for each; there is not a global
standard. Each format requires a different set of instructions in the
form of Codecs in order to play correctly.
Now, this is only the beginning because the primary question here in
this answer is really, what *is* Windows Media Player content. The
truth is,
Windows Media Content is whatever it says it is. Like any media
player, you can associate it with many different formats beyond the
default, so that, for instance if it were associated with MP3's, any
MP3 you found on the WWW would appear as a Windows Media Link. I know
that isn't in the spirit of the question, though, so I will say that
files with the extensions .asf, .asx, .wm, .wmx, and .wmp are content
intended for Windows Media Player. To use .asf for an example, the
format itself is merely a compression scheme to allow media to stream
seamlessly on the web. The content within the .asf file could have
been recorded any number of ways, however. You could compare to a
zipped file, somewhat. You could name two different .zip files the
same name, but their contents might be dramatically different. This
works like my example in the original answer. You could have two
videos on two different sites that are the same except for one thing;
they were recorded with different technology. Therefore, while one
player may be able to play one of them, it does not necessarily follow
that it could play the other, even though both may be in the Windows
Media Player "format".
This is all further complicated by the fact that, as you can see from
the statistics, that there are many different configurations out
there. Each of these potentially has a different version of Windows
Media Player. There are many different versions floating around out
there, starting usually with 5 and going all the way up to 9. They
obviously do not all play the same content. So, even more
frustratingly, two different people could go to play the same video
and have different versions of Windows Media Player, one whom could
play without an upgrade while the other would need one.
So, because of all of this, there really isn't a way to answer your
question, since all content is not equal, all versions of players are
not equal, and there is no standard for the technology. You could
compare each users configuration to a fingerprint, which disallows for
any real kind of comparison except on a case-by-case basis.
Now, in regards to the bid, I would say it is a fair price. I would
say that the rate is a combination of various factors, including the
difficulty of acquiring the information, the importance of the
information to you, and the thoroughness of the research you would
like done. This is all subjective of course. I do not have any
professional experience with streaming media although I do have
professional experience with computers in general. I am sure there
are some researchers out there with this background, though. I hope
this helps.
Best Regards,
watershed-ga
,
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