Media Player Software

Select Access TV clips currently support Windows Media and Real Player formats on Macintosh and WIndows Operating Systems. If you do not have either of these Player programs, click on a button below to download a free version from their respective web sites and begin experiencing video content on select-access.com

Media Players- Which is better?

Real

We've found that given the same settings, clips in Real Player format tend to have better picture quality than Windows Media and a slightly smaller file size (meaning quicker loading time), but also seem to suffer from problems synchronizing the audio with the video and more frequent "rebuffering" of the video (player has to stop and retrieve more data from the server due to Internet connection problems). Aside from QuickTime, Real also seems to be better supported on the Macintosh platform.

Windows Media

Windows Media benefits from being one of the most ubiquitous formats on the Web and the best supported on Windows computers. It also seems to start playing sooner than Real clips and synchronizes the audio and video tracks better. One of the drawbacks is that it often seems to start playing the audio before it can display video, resulting in a blank screen until enough data is downloaded. Finally, the Windows Media video often appears more blurry or pixelated than Real clips encoded at the same settings.

Which media player should you use? It often comes down to a personal preference, or whether it came pre-bundled on your computer. Unless your computer is crowded for disk space, its not a bad idea to have both.