Firefly Trailer Available on Official Website

POSTED BY: NewsAdmin
UPDATED: Thursday, August 8, 2002 21:18
VIEWED: 8906
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NEWSADMIN

Wednesday, July 31, 2002 12:37 PM

The first Firefly trailer that we've been seeing for the past month is now online at the Official Firefly Website. Unfortunately, no news of whether the second trailer, which appeared most recently during Tuesday's episode of American Idol, will be made available as well.

Installation of Real Network's RealOne Player is required to view the trailer.

To view the trailer you can go here:

http://www.fox.com/firefly/main.htm

To download the RealOne Player, you can go here:

http://www.real.com/

Note: IMHO, the official site should have stuck with Quicktime. You'll see what I mean. You know what? Let me just warn you to be careful when installing their player. It'll save you some headaches in the future.

And Mac owners, you need not worry, you can't even run the player unless you have OS X, which means you can't view the trailer until you upgrade.

Didn't mean to editorialize, but this really annoys me.

ZICSOFT

Wednesday, July 31, 2002 4:30 PM

I think the people who do the trailers and the people who do those "insider" videos are separate organizations.

I'm suprised to hear that you can't see the trailers on MacOS. Isn't there a Real player for that platform? I'm pretty sure there is.

In any case, it's not a big deal -- the trailers suck. Just a bunch of images we've seen already, and some lame sloganeering. "No vampires!" Yeah, that's a great teaser line.

Not to worry. Shows like this live or die on word-of-mouth. And trust me: Firefly will generate a lot of WOM.

HAKEN

Wednesday, July 31, 2002 7:39 PM

I stand corrected about the Mac. There is indeed a version that runs under OS X.

The thing that annoys me is that RealPlayers in the past have been known to take over the computer (remember the dreaded downloader?), and the player itself is, sorry to say--inferior--and full of stalkerware and spyware that annoys with ads, etc..

When was the last time you saw a RealVideo without their signature bad compression with its blocky blurred mess. Windows Media has dominated the web for the past couple of years in the online video arena with better technology.

As a side note, Real Network recently laid off more employees. The ongoing rumor within the online tech community is that Real's days are numbered.

Anyway, you might be right. Perhaps the videos on the official website originates from different divisions within FOX. Though, you would think that the official website, with it's "webteam" would at least be able to convert it over to Quicktime and keep things consistent throughout their website, even if it's a temporary one until the launch of the new one next month.

HJERMSTED

Wednesday, July 31, 2002 7:50 PM

Win Med player has its blocky badstream moments too though admittedly not as many as Real Player which totally blows.

In my experience, the only media player that works consistently cross platform is Quicktime. Why promoters of a TV show or movie use any format other than Quicktime is beyond me. C'mon, you want your movie/show to look good don't you?

mattro

ZICSOFT

Wednesday, July 31, 2002 10:10 PM

Yeah, I share your dislike of Real software. I think it's been a while since they had runaway processes or other system crippling bugs. But they still have lots of bugs! If I could avoid it, I'd never use any of there software.

But I can't avoid it. There's a lot of stuff on the web, like the NPR and CBC archives, that are only available in their format. And I own an MP3 player that needs a RealPlayer plugin for its downloads.

Media companies like Real formats because they're hard to convert to more portable formats. (I get around this with a product called Total Recorder, which hooks into the Windows audio driver.) The ironic thing is that Real formats are not particularly hard to crack or reverse-engineer. But anybody who does has to deal with Real's lawyers -- and their lawyers are a lot better than their engineers!

They did back away from some of the spyware they tried to include in early versions. And it was never as intrusive as the spyware included with products like Gator. Not even close.

ZICSOFT

Thursday, August 1, 2002 12:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hjermsted:

In my experience, the only media player that works consistently cross platform is Quicktime.

Actually, Quicktime isn't as portable as you might think. The player itself runs on everything, but not all codecs are available on all platforms.

I was working at SGI when Phantom Menace came out, and they released a Quicktime trailer for it. Lucasfilm still used our hardware in those days, so you'd think we'd be able to read anything they released. But they used a brand-new codec that hadn't been ported to IRIX (probably still hasn't). So we had to wait for somebody with a Mac to translate the file before we could watch it.

The one video format that everybody supports is MPEG-2. Problem is, it uses about 20% more bits than the latest codecs for Quicktime, Real, or Windows Media Player. People watch their bandwidth these days, so they use whatever's convenient and small, and never mind if a few people can't watch it.

ENIGMATIC

Thursday, August 1, 2002 1:20 AM

The official site has now added a Quicktime version of the trailer as requested by the fans!

TIEKA

Saturday, August 3, 2002 5:43 PM

Great :( One more example of how FOX doesn't care about the fans. I know JW has used Macs in his shows, so I know this isn't his idea.

Thanks a lot FOX. Good thing I expect better from everybody else involved in this project.

Tieka,
not letting FOX have any of my

Once you've been in Serenity, you never leave. You just learn to live there. --Firefly script

GUANTES

Saturday, August 3, 2002 9:14 PM

Do you guys still need it in a different file format?

I've got the software to maybe change it into another more acceptable format so if you'd like to tell me which clip and which format I'll give it a shot!

Phil
"Things involving the computer fill me with a childlike terror. Now, if it
were a nice ogre or some such, I'd be more in my element." -Giles

NOVAGRASS

Monday, August 5, 2002 1:22 AM

This is a bit off-topic, but Fox just played the best Firefly preview to date. It was during The Simpsons, and it featured a shirtless Alan Tudyk playing with plastic toy dinosaurs. It was great!

*dylan waits not-so-patiently for the website to post the trailer*

--Dylan Palmer, aka NoVaGrAsS--

The Ultimate Buffy-Angel Quote Generator™
Xander: "No one is judging you. It's understandable-- Spike is strong and myseterious, and sort of compact, but well-muscled...."
Buffy: "I am not having sex with Spike! But I'm starting to think that you might be!"

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