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irydna · Jul 14, 2006, 01:46 PM

Oh Wise Readers of MacNN,

I request to tap once again into your seemingly infinite body of knowledge concerning my silly little problems. You have served me so reliably in the past, and I don't thank you enough for that. But enough ado.

I heart Jon Stewart. If I were to receive cable television, his (and perhaps Stephen Colbert's) show would be the only one(s) I would watch. For the longest time on my old computer (IBook G3 12"), my Jonny would grace the screen every so often as I streamed videos through comedycentral.com.

Now, I have gone and done a terrible thing and Jon is no longer in my life. I have purchased one of these newfangled MacBooks (13"), and his smiling face has yet to successfully stream to my computer. Currently, I use FireFox 1.5.0.4 to surf the world wide web (and compose this lovely message), and when I go about clicking on videos through comedycentral's website, it requests me to seek Windows Media Player 9 plugins (I have received identical errors when surfing with Safari).

I believe I have successfully downloaded said Windows Media Player 9 (from Microsoft's website, through the links provided on comedycentral), and still receive errors of not getting the specific plugins. I have researched this slightly, and found that "Flip4Mac" might potentially solve this problem. Unfortunately, that download proved unsuccessful, as Flip4Mac is not yet supported on those unclean "Intel" machines.

So I ask you, sweet MacNN readers, could you reunite me with my long lost Jon Stewart (and Stephen Colbert too)?

Sincerely,

-Andy

MacDude88 · Jul 14, 2006, 02:04 PM

Originally Posted by irydna

Oh Wise Readers of MacNN,

I request to tap once again into your seemingly infinite body of knowledge concerning my silly little problems. You have served me so reliably in the past, and I don't thank you enough for that. But enough ado.

I heart Jon Stewart. If I were to receive cable television, his (and perhaps Stephen Colbert's) show would be the only one(s) I would watch. For the longest time on my old computer (IBook G3 12"), my Jonny would grace the screen every so often as I streamed videos through comedycentral.com.

Now, I have gone and done a terrible thing and Jon is no longer in my life. I have purchased one of these newfangled MacBooks (13"), and his smiling face has yet to successfully stream to my computer. Currently, I use FireFox 1.5.0.4 to surf the world wide web (and compose this lovely message), and when I go about clicking on videos through comedycentral's website, it requests me to seek Windows Media Player 9 plugins (I have received identical errors when surfing with Safari).

I believe I have successfully downloaded said Windows Media Player 9 (from Microsoft's website, through the links provided on comedycentral), and still receive errors of not getting the specific plugins. I have researched this slightly, and found that "Flip4Mac" might potentially solve this problem. Unfortunately, that download proved unsuccessful, as Flip4Mac is not yet supported on those unclean "Intel" machines.

So I ask you, sweet MacNN readers, could you reunite me with my long lost Jon Stewart (and Stephen Colbert too)?

Sincerely,

-Andy

Boot camp or parallels?

irydna · Jul 14, 2006, 02:39 PM

Neither?

I originally had no idea what you were talking about, read a bit about it, searched my mac, and I am working with neither boot camp nor parallels. I'm just using Mac OS X Tiger (whatever they ship with the MacBooks), and have no desire to be able to run Windows on my computer at the moment. I just want to be able to stream videos from comedycentral, which are (to the best of my knowledge) encoded in Windows Media Player 9. Hope I'm making some sense.

Thanks,

-Andy

plastiqueusa · Jul 14, 2006, 03:35 PM

There's actually a Flip4Mac beta which'll help you with that sappy Jon Stewart crush. Do a bit of digging around on Google, and you might find a link.

cambro · Jul 14, 2006, 05:20 PM

Your problem is that Microsft has officially stopped developing WMP for mac and the third party plug in for quicktime, flip4mac, is not readily available as a universal binary just yet. It will be very soon, but that doesn't help you now.

There are two things to do:

1) Tell comedy central that they are evil for deciding to go with a proprietary video format that will officially only be supported on the Windows platform (future of WMP on mac, even with flip4mac, is unclear).

2) Try Popwire, which is also a freely available universal WMP quicktime plugin, although it does not appear to be as good as flip4mac. Comedy central videos didn't play for me but many other WM files do work on my Macbook with popwire.

bubbaboy7 · Jul 14, 2006, 05:47 PM

I too am a big fan of mr stewart. May I suggest using a program like Bittorrent to download the show as an AVI? Much better quality and they show up daily.

TheoCryst · Jul 14, 2006, 07:22 PM

Originally Posted by plastiqueusa

There's actually a Flip4Mac beta which'll help you with that sappy Jon Stewart crush. Do a bit of digging around on Google, and you might find a link.

Seconded. The beta is actually quite reliable, much to my surprise. Most major torrent sites will have this as well. I'd post a link, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed (does this count as illegal downloading? It is just a free beta of a free piece of software, right?).

brokenjago · Jul 14, 2006, 09:04 PM

Posting Torrents of files that you can normally download legally anywhere else is fine.

Dillon-K · Jul 14, 2006, 09:24 PM

Uhm... tell Comedy Central to stop #@#@$!%#$!#!#$!#%!#%$!#@$!@%!@#$!#$!@#%!$%!#$!#@^% !$#@$@%!#$#@ Microsoft and get with the real deal: QuickTime.

muaddib420 · Jul 14, 2006, 11:45 PM

download the torrent from here

http://tinyurl.com/j3z5o

then use the torrent program transmission to get the flip4mac universal. works for some websites, but still a bit buggy. not sure it'll work with comedycentral.com, but it's worth a try...

http://osx.iusethis.com/app/download/7

monkeybrain · Jul 15, 2006, 04:44 AM

Well if the torrent is legal... this is a link to a mirror of the file, easier than a torrent:

http://trogdoor.googlepages.com/Flip...Vv2_1_0_29.dmg

(not my website).

Ouhei · Jul 15, 2006, 10:04 AM

Ahh, best thread ever! I've been searching for the flip4mac beta for 2 weeks and for some reason could never find a working torrent. Now I can stream pretty much anything!

antoniola · Jul 17, 2006, 07:41 PM

Comedy Central has a habit of changing it's streaming format often, however, here's a workaround to getting it to work with Flip4Mac:

1) Edit your /etc/hosts file, and add an entry for ad.doubleclick.net:

127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net

2) Turn Personal Web Sharing on (found in the Sharing preference panel).

This will cause your Mac to query itself (127.0.0.1) for the ad.doubleclick.net files, they won't be found, and the stream you wish to view will then be shown.

stuffedmonkey · Jul 17, 2006, 10:00 PM

Just an idea - but why don't you subscribe to the show via iTunes? You can get 16 episodes for 9.99 - which would seem to be a great deal cheaper then cable. Plus you could watch the episodes whenever you want and save the ones you like best...

hldan · Jul 17, 2006, 11:17 PM

Originally Posted by stuffedmonkey

Just an idea - but why don't you subscribe to the show via iTunes? You can get 16 episodes for 9.99 - which would seem to be a great deal cheaper then cable. Plus you could watch the episodes whenever you want and save the ones you like best...

Good idea (although it requires paying for it) but unfortunately that only solves one issue. This crap with Microsoft and their so-called DRM (which is another way to block off Mac Users) needs to be solved so Mac Users can view videos on the web without special workarounds and sometimes the workarounds don't help especially on MTV's Overdrive. Bill Gate's tactics work against the very customer that spend money on his office suites.