Apple Announces QuickTime 5

On April 23, 2001, Apple announced the immediate availability of QuickTime 5 and the upcoming availability of QuickTime Streaming Server 3 at NAB, the annual international conference of the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas. 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 player is immediately available for free download. Localized versions of QuickTime 5 will be available in May 2001. For registered users of QuickTime Pro 3 or 4: your registration key won't work for QuickTime Pro 5. It's free to update to QuickTime 5 player, but you've got to pay $29.99 plus tax to get the Pro features. 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. QuickTime Streaming Server 3 will be available in May 2001. 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.