InterVU Inc. announced the industry's first release of a Macintosh audio and video MPEG Player.

InterVU's MPEG Player 0.95 plug-in module for Netscape Navigator 2.0 and 3.0 is a beta release that offers audio capability as well as advanced features such as first-frame previewing, streaming and full-quality MPEG playback from cache or hard drive.

Due to numerous requests from Macintosh users, InterVU developed a Mac version of the InterVU MPEG Player and enhanced it with full audio support. This latest release enables the user to view and hear the video during streaming preview or when played back from cache.

In order to listen to the video during downloading, Web surfers need a fast enough Internet connection. Otherwise, they can watch the video during downloading and then hear and watch the video played back from cached memory.

``InterVU's commitment to providing interactive video delivery to any platform now allows Macintosh users the capability to view and hear video with a first-class MPEG video player,'' said Craig Miller, plug-in evangelist at Apple Computer Inc.

InterVU's MPEG players offer several unique innovations that make video more accessible on the Internet and intranets and also greatly enhance the viewing experience of the user. First-frame preview enhances the richness of the Web page and allows users to sample the first frame of a video to determine its relevancy.

If users then decide to download the video, they can view it in streaming mode as it is downloaded from the Web site.

InterVU's players stream the file as fast as the modem allows. A 28.8 Kbaud modem connection will provide transmission of images at a few frames per second, which is enough for reasonably good viewing of the video during streaming. The user can then determine if the file should continue to be downloaded for later playback at full quality or terminated to continue browsing other files.

In addition to first-frame preview and streaming, InterVU MPEG players also support playback from cache or the hard drive. Unlike other MPEG players that do not support playback from cache or disk, the InterVU player downloads the entire MPEG file regardless of the modem speed, allowing for playback at full MPEG quality.

This is important to the end user, who will view the highest- quality video, and to the content developer who will now no longer be forced to sacrifice the quality of his or her video due to technical shortcomings of the video player.

``People have been waiting for a really good Mac video player and the InterVU MPEG Player offers features not available in any other video player on the market,'' said Harry Gruber, chief executive officer for InterVU.

``For example, no other player offers first-frame preview and full MPEG quality playback from cache. Also, our player doesn't require any proprietary server or encoding software.''

In contrast to many other video-delivery solutions on the market today, InterVU has developed its video player based on the MPEG open standard.

``This eliminates the cost for a dedicated server, proprietary encoders and licensing and royalty fees that may be required by proprietary video solutions, thus freeing content developers to direct their resources towards development of more creative Web sites,'' said Gruber.

InterVU's goal is to make video affordable and accessible to everyone on the Internet in the same way that text files are today. By including more video on Web pages, content developers are paving the way to a ``video as information'' society.

Download the current free version of the InterVU MPEG Player

 

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