[opendtv] Re: Can't stream HD?
- From: "Kon Wilms" <konfoo@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:19:26 -0800
On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 8:19 PM, Richard C. Ramsden <ramsden@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 1) Don't get into interface design. Quicktime has the same interface on
> every OS it runs on. It was designed to run on apple OS. Programming in it
> on Widows can be a pain, but not impossible. As it is an industry standard,
> I would suggest that anyone's issues with the interface have to do with
> personal experience and bias.
Um yeah ok. Next time try going by the facts and not your personal views.
See: Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/1/9/e191fd8c-bce8-4dba-a9d5-2d4e3f3ec1d3/ux%20guide.pdf
And some education:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interface_guidelines
Maybe Apple could try reading those the next time they decide to
'port' a player to the windows platform.
The fact that Quicktime uses the same UI design on all platforms is
EXACTLY the problem. It doesn't obey the HIG on any platform (even
OSX). Programming a cross platform player is much easier if you use
flexible UI toolkits like QT instead of inventing your own and sucking
down the user's RAM just so you can attempt to get your branding
across when they run the app on their platform.
Every OS has a set of HIG. Failure to implement them means an
inconsistent user interface and inability of users to learn a set of
common controls and functionality so that they can work more
efficiently.
This is basic material and every university-level CS program teaches
HIG *before* they let the students loose on graphical programming.
The thing that amuses me the most is for example QT player's Help menu
doesn't even maintain the HIG set used on the other menus. Total
amateur hour.
OSX HIG on windows is *pure* marketing spin at the expense of the
user's RAM, CPU and general usability.
The same goes for Safari (another buggy pile on windows).
> 2) bloat? compared to what?
Memory usage (just to load the app, no playback)
QT Player (no itunes installed) - 50Mb
MPC: 6Mb
VLC: 7Mb
And my favorite:
Windows Media Player: 24Mb
(and that's *with* a fairly large media database loaded)
Bloat.
> 3) codecs. Perhaps you may have noticed that Quicktime on windows does not
> include a MPEG2 codec. Apple's windows MPEG2 codec is junk. Other than
> edit suites, who uses Quicktime MPEG2 files on Windows? If you are actually
> using the Quicktime SDK it is not hard to use whatever codec you want.
As far as MPEG2 decode goes there are more than enough better options
on windows than having to resort to QT's MPEG2 decoder. The quality of
the MPEG2 decoder is pretty bad on the apple platform as well IIRC.
> 4) free. Have you read the fine print? NOT free.
Which is why Apple stopped using Directshow filters and built the
decoder into the player in the newer versions. Hey, why use the
standard for video and audio decode that the OS platform uses? Make
your own! Just another reason not to use QT under windows.
The following for amusement factor:
Results 1 - 10 of about 514,000 for windows sucks
Results 1 - 10 of about 808,000 for quicktime sucks.
Cheers
Kon
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