following the thread, I asked a friend of mine who works in "Le Crunch"
>Why can I not get Quicktime for Linux?
The short answer is "You can: QuickTime has been reverse-engineered a
couple of times"
Somehow, I think your question is "Why can't I play QuickTime movies
on Linux?", which is a different teapot of sardines. Basically, a
QuickTime movie is a container for lots of time-based information
streams. The coding used for these can be different, depending on
what it is: for example, MIDI control codes, MPEG video, stock price
info, etc. These different types of data are dealt with by plug-in
QuickTime Codecs.
The big problem for Linux is that QT3 and later use a proprietory
video codec called Sorensen Video. This is great for Apple because
the video compression is the best around. It's bad for the Linux
world, because Sorensen charge a licence to use the decompressor.
Apple pay this fee, and give away QT for free because it gets an
indirect return in the form of Mac-compatible video CDs, websites,
etc. But, <company-line>there isn't a big enough Linux desktop market
to justify a Linux QT player</company-line>.
In short, until someone else licences or reverse-engineers the
Sorensen Video codec, you will not be able to play QT movies on Linux.
--
John Ronan <j0n at tssg.wit.ie>, +353-51-302411
Telecommunications Software Systems Group - WIT, http://www.tssg.org
"Any man that is willing to give up freedom for security deservers neither"
...Abraham Lincoln
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