Apple Releases QuickTime 5 And QuickTime Streaming Server 3

by , 1:00 PM EDT, April 23rd, 2001

Apple has announced the much anticipated release of the next version of their multimedia player, QuickTime 5. QuickTime 5 is the latest upgrade to Apple's popular and powerful QuickTime technology. Version 5 shipped with Mac OS X, but this announcement marks the availability of QuickTime 5 for Mac OS 9 and Windows.

Apple has also announced the availability of their QuickTime Streaming Server 3. QuickTime Streaming Server is built to run on Mac OS X, and gives users and Web masters the ability to allow streaming based QuickTime playback. According to Apple:

Apple today announced QuickTime 5, Apple's industry-leading software for creating, playing and streaming high-quality audio and video over the Internet, and QuickTime Streaming Server 3, Apple's new version of the standards-based, open source, streaming server. In addition, Apple is demonstrating a preview version of QuickTime with support for industry-standard MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 encoding and decoding.

"QuickTime has been long established as the digital media standard for capturing, encoding and delivering content on the Internet," said Philip Schiller, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "QuickTime 5 offers incredible new capabilities for everyone who creates or views multimedia content."

QuickTime 5 includes an enhanced user-interface with new audio controls, "Hot Picks" guide and QuickTime TV (QTV) channels display; a new DV codec for enhanced speed and quality; the ability for content creators to design custom interfaces for the delivery of their QuickTime content; and a component downloader to add Apple's own enhancements as well as third-party plug-ins on the fly. QuickTime 5 also offers full support for MPEG-1, Flash 4 and QuickTime's new Cubic VR technology.

Apple's QuickTime Streaming Server 3 includes Skip Protection, a patented collection of features that protects the quality of streams from disruptions on the Internet, and a new easy-to-use web-based interface that can be administered locally or remotely to configure server settings. Coupled with Mac OS X Server on a Power Mac G4, QuickTime Streaming Server 3 lets users start up a streaming digital video channel with support for more than 3,000 concurrent streams to QuickTime users. Darwin Streaming Server, the Open Source version of QuickTime Streaming Server 3, offers support for FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, Windows NT and Windows 2000.

With over 150 million copies of QuickTime 4 already in distribution worldwide, QuickTime is fast becoming the world's leading cross-platform multimedia technology and is today the only open source, standards-based streaming solution. As a co-founder of the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA), Apple is dedicated to the development of products and technologies that adhere to industry standards to provide an optimized user experience through interoperability. QuickTime was chosen by the International Standards Organization (ISO) as the base file format for MPEG-4, and Apple is working with other ISMA members to bring interoperable MPEG-4 products and technologies to market.

QuickTime 5 Player is available for free, while QuickTime 5 Pro is available for US$29.99. You can find more information at the Apple Web site.

Apple