Windows Media Player is one of the oldest in the business of playing videos today and it was introduced as early as 1999 under its name WMV. This format with file extension .wmv, was created especially for a user to stream his videos over the internet without loss in details during compression. It was essential to have a dedicated format to stream videos over the internet as these were initial days of video streaming and there were no standards to be followed. This WMV format allowed a person to compress his video files to any compression ratio and it was feasible for being streamed over World Wide Web. Low bit rate streaming was essential in earlier versions of this format as internet speed were not as high as they are today.
Considering a movie
One must concede that most video content on the internet were of wmv format during initial periods of internet streaming as this was the only format with a codec. A codec is a piece of software that can code and decode images and videos and this particular codec can be used with an advanced system called ASF container format. This container format remains true to its name and allows a wide variety of files to be used with each other and read at the same time. Since windows medial player was the only player that could read wmv files, those who had systems with Mac operating system required special converters to enable them view wmv files on their computers. This scenario has not changed much today and though there are patches that allow a Mac user to view wmv files, it continues to be advantageous to a user, if he installed a converter to enable him play WMV on Mac.
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