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The deals and things are being fed into Multineedia.com. We will soon move the deals category over to Multineedia so you don't have to read it, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

UPDATE on Onion AV Club uses QuickTime and RTSP

Turns out that this:
rtsp://teasdale.theonion.com:554/avclub/media/4127/ohno_move.mov

Won't play in RealPlayer, just Quicktime. My Webjay palylist of Onion AV Club stuff won't play in Real: each track will get as far as 99% (sometimes 100%) before it gives up.

HOWEVER - and this is a first try for me - it will play in Quicktime. Cutting and pasting the following into QT:
http://webjay.org/by/webjaybs/onionavclub.smil

actually works. You even get the images for a few seconds. Oddly, it plays as if it were one big ol' track, and there doesn't seem to be a way to rewind or fast-foward. That said, it actually works. So I guess that's a Quicktime RTSP playlist.

Two questions:

1. Why do they make this so difficult? That is, why doesn't The Onion use a not-annoying format to serve up their files? If I really wanted to capture these songs, I could easily record the streams. Plus, if you're using Real's server (RTSP), why not serve up Real files, which at least are somewhat easier to playlist?
2. Why is Quicktime so annoying? It didn't used to be. It's possible (actually, likely) that I just never noticed how annoying it was, or just never tried to do the things I'm doing now (playlists, mostly). But it does seem that Apple has somewhat abandoned Quicktime as a delivery medium for web content. How can I say that, you ask? The future is in playlists, Steve Jobs, and your player is the worst playlister among all major media players. Now say that ten times fast.

For what it's worth, this playlist seems to play in Quicktime as well. Go to File -> Open URL in new player and paste this:
http://webjay.org/by/webjaybs/qt-test.smil

into the dialog box. Whoo-hoo.

[/playlist_research] permanent link

Onion AV Club uses QuickTime and RTSP

On The Onion AV Club's new listening page (which actually has some good stuff, so it's annoying to have to listen to it one track at a time), this link will get you this if you View -> Source:
RTSPtextrtsp://teasdale.theonion.com:554/avclub/media/4127/ohno_right.mov

Which is, of course, not easily saveable. Which is, of course, the point. Of course, if you're going to do this, Onion people, you should at least provide some method of playing all the tracks in... oh, what's that thing all the kids are into these days? A PLAYLIST.

Update: RealPlayer 10 on Windows XP will play the rtsp stream, even though it's Quicktime, not Real. A Webjay playlist is here, I'll add to it when possible.

[/playlist_research] permanent link