does WMP not work with G5s?

[kwikdeth]

i have a dual 2.5ghz G5 which i frickin' love.. but in the 6 months i have had this thing, there is one thing which has consistently vexed me...
Windoze media player absolutely will not work. not with any sort of OS (10.3.7-10.4.3) not after permissions repair, not after delete and re-install, and not after something else screwed up my machine and i needed to do a reformat and reinstall. WMP has not EVER run on this machine. looking at the page, it seems that WMP hasn't been updated since 2003. is that the reason? are they just not updating it to work on newer machines?
am i stupid? what is going on that media player won't work? the usual error message is "the specified stream format is not recognized" and this occurs with both downloaded, full WMV files and streamed content as well. the same app works fine on my G4 upgraded pismo and my roommate's dual 500mhz g4. what's wrong with my system? any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[HiRez]

Windoze media player absolutely will not work. not with any sort of OS (10.3.7-10.4.3) not after permissions repair, not after delete and re-install,

It works for me (dual 2.0 G5). It sucks hard, but it works.

 

[mduser63]

Works fine on my dual 1.8 GHz G5 with 10.3.9.

 

[MisterMe]

i have a dual 2.5ghz G5 which i frickin' love.. but in the 6 months i have had this thing, there is one thing which has consistently vexed me...
Windoze media player absolutely will not work. not with any sort of OS (10.3.7-10.4.3) not after permissions repair, not after delete and re-install, and not after something else screwed up my machine and i needed to do a reformat and reinstall. WMP has not EVER run on this machine. looking at the page, it seems that WMP hasn't been updated since 2003. is that the reason? are they just not updating it to work on newer machines?
am i stupid? what is going on that media player won't work? the usual error message is "the specified stream format is not recognized" and this occurs with both downloaded, full WMV files and streamed content as well. the same app works fine on my G4 upgraded pismo and my roommate's dual 500mhz g4. what's wrong with my system? any help would be greatly appreciated.

To the best of my knowledge, you are the first to report that WMP does not work on a 2.5 GHz Power Mac G5. It works just fine on mine.

Word to the wise: Undo whatever you did between the time your took delivery of your machine and the time that you installed WMP.

 

[generik]

Why use that crap known as WMP?

VLC is the best

 

[radiantm3]

I just use this: http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv.htm

$10 bucks gives you the ability to play all WMV files up to version 9 in quicktime. It works really well and I never have to worry about WMP anymore.

 

[HiRez]

Why use that crap known as WMP?

VLC is the best

Unfortunately, VLC doesn't play most WMV files I trhow at it. It does best with MPEG and AVI, in my experience. I have a friend who converts WMV->QT with a utility called Flip4Mac (or something like that), and he has been happy with the results.

 

[Makosuke]

It works for me (dual 2.0 G5). It sucks hard, but it works.

Exactly the same as my answer. I paid the $10 for the Flip4Mac codec and have been quite happy with it, though--it doesn't play 100% of videos, and can't handle most streams, but what it will play it does very well with.

That said, I did have an issue where WMP refused to launch without crashing, which required deleting both of its preference files (there's more than just the .plist) to revive it. Doesn't sound like your problem, though, and I'm pretty sure it was upgrading to 10.4 that caused it anyway.

Just out of curiosity, have you tried creating a new, clean account and seeing if it runs there?

 

[Rocksaurus]

That said, I did have an issue where WMP refused to launch without crashing, which required deleting both of its preference files (there's more than just the .plist) to revive it. Doesn't sound like your problem, though, and I'm pretty sure it was upgrading to 10.4 that caused it anyway.

Do this. If it doesn't work, maybe it's time to reformat?

 

[aussiemac86]

Works fine on my 2.5. Im running version 9.0. VLC is great but it doesnt run heaps of .wmv files.