While people are trying to crack down on users swapping songs, a new fad is downloading movies. Like MP3's videos are compressed for fast downloading time. They still remain high quality when played back on a monitor. Some new technologies, called progressive downloads, allow the user to start watching the movie after only a part of it has been downloaded. Video is compressed using codecs, or technology that compresses or decompresses data, reducing size of a feature-length film to a few hundred megabytes. Not long ago media players would only support their own proprietary codecs but with new technologies the industry supports multiple codecs. .
Right now there are three main media players and they are Microsoft's Windows Media Player 9, RealNetworks" RealOne Player and Apple's QuickTime. "The battle between these media players continues, but it's turning into a battle of codecs, since Apple, then Real, and most recently, Microsoft, have opened up to support multiple codecs," says Kimberly Reed, an editor at DV magazine, a publication for professionals who create digital video. "Window Media Player 9 series also offers faster buffering than past versions for more of an "instant click experience."" Said David Caulton, a lead product manager at Microsoft. "The advantage of RealOne Player format is our Helix Digital Rights Management Software, enabling studios to protect their content." Said Richard Brownrigg Jr., a general manager at RealNet. Apple is farthest behind on length movie playing but has found out that customers want to download short movies with good quality and Apple is offering it. .