Audio/Video Players/Aggregators, Web TV and Codec
Audio/Video Players
The VLC media player (or VideoLAN) http://www.videolan.org/ is an open-source video (and audio) player available for all major platforms and capable of playing back almost all video formats found online. The VLC can be used as a streaming server http://www.videolan.org/streaming/ and also for transcoding video(streams). (*)
The MPlayer http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html, open-source, is "the Movie Player for Linux", but there is also the MPlayer OS X http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net/.
Aggregators, Web TV
Miro http://www.getmiro.com/, open-source, brings independent internet tv (and using the Broadcast Machine http://www.getmiro.com/create/broadcast/ anyone can publish media - also via Bittorrent). Available for all major platforms.
FireAnt http://getfireant.com/ is - like Miro or Apple's iTunes http://www.apple.com/itunes/ - a feed aggregator, meaning a user can subscribe to a particular channel via a publisher's RSS feed and the app will automatically download the latest episode of a particular programme. FireAnt is specially popular with parts of the videoblogging community, and it also offers one of the best ways of playing back downloaded .flv (Flash Video) files. (KeepVid http://keepvid.com/ lets users download Flash Videos from sites like YoutTube.) Available for Windows and Mac OS X.
PenguinTV http://penguintv.sourceforge.net/, open-source, is "not just another RSS feed reader. It is designed from the ground up to work seamlessly with podcasts and video blogs". Available for Linux.
Tribler https://www.tribler.org/, licensed under the LGPL (en.wikipedia.org) , "is a social community that facilitates filesharing through a so called peer-to-peer (p2p) network." Available for all major platforms.
Adobe Media Player http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/mediaplayer.html, commercial software, "is a prerelease" and "being made available for consumers to test the user experience, and for content publishers to test the compatibility of their existing Media RSS feeds with Flash-based video content." This might be of interest since the Flash Player 9 http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9/ now supports H.264. Available for Windows and Mac OS X.
Codec
FOSS Codecs For Online Video http://wiki.transmission.cc/index.php/FOSS_Codecs_For_Online_Video:_Usability_Uptake_and_Development_1.2 "Usability Uptake and Development 1.2"
Flip4Mac http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htm is a commercial but free (there is a pro/to buy version) that allows Mac users to watch (newer) .wmv encoded files either via the web browser or with the QuickTime Player. Since the latest version of the open-source VLC (0.8.6) - see above - now also plays back videos encoded with the newer Windows Media 9 codec (on the Mac), Flip4Mac might not be so important any more for some Mac users.
QTAmateur http://www.mikeash.com/?page=software/qtamateur/index.html is "a small, simple QuickTime video player. It can play any format that QuickTime can understand, handle fullscreen video playback, and export files to any format that QuickTime can write ...includes a Batch Export function which can convert any number of movies at a time to another format."
Perian http://perian.org/ is "a free, open source QuickTime® component that adds native support for many popular video formats" (like .avi and .flv). Requires OS X 10.4.7.
Xiph QuickTime Components http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/ is "the solution for Mac and Windows users who want to use Xiph formats in any QuickTime-based application, e.g. playing Ogg Vorbis in iTunes."
Ogg Vorbis http://www.vorbis.com/ (for audio) and Ogg Theora http://www.theora.org/ (for video) are open-source alternatives for media encoding, also interesting for commercial online publishing since they are patent free and no license fees will have to be paid.
(*) VLC 0.8.6 (December 2006): Windows Media 9 and Flash Video now also supported under OS X. The only major format not supported yet on any platform is the increasingly unpopular RealVideo.
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