Freeware Rocks - MPEG Streamclip & HandBrake

MPEG Streamclip is a powerful high-quality video converter, player, editor for MPEG, QuickTime, transport streams, iPod. And now it is a DivX editor and encoding machine, and even a stream and YouTube downloader.
http://www.squared5.com/

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.
http://handbrake.m0k.org/?page_id=5

Popularity of Streaming Media Servers and Formats

An Jan report at Network computing has a detial comparison of streaming media server and compatable players - a quick look. There is actual client (VLC) for QT on Un*x platforms.

Also, Reach and Market have a few interesting reports on the market share and popularity of streaming media file types and applications. I wish my company would pay for them ..

• CDN Market Dynamics, Analysis and Streaming Share: 2005 - 2006
• Flash Streaming Video 2004 - 2006: CDN, Site And Advertiser Adoption
  

and a lot more ......

Reports on Streaming Media Players

I read a Report (based on Nielsen//NetRatings) on the Streaming Media players earlier last month and it is very interesting after studied the results and looked at the blogs a little more. I do agree it needs to be clarify that if the numbers for iTunes and QuickTime are duplicates (same set of users). If not, the total should be combined. Also, I think there are certain number of Unix/Linux users will stay away from Real with more H.264 Opensource players available. WM will stay on top for a while (or, forever) since it comes with Windows Operating Systems. I would like to see more information on usage than installations ..

4-5-2006
This is very interesting report on player with video capability from Macromedia site and discussion at here. So, looks like Flash is the winner without taking account of the quality and open standard of streaming media ..