New Media same as the Old Media

The Houston Chronicle, along with many other media outlets with a web presence is experimenting with video clips via a Beta program with AP. AP is working with Microsoft on this project, as a result, Microsoft's old monoloplistic urges come forth yet again. In order to actually WATCH the video, you have to have IE6, Flash 7, AND Windows Media Player 10. All of this means that Mac's, people not running the latest version of Windows (XP or higher is required for Media Player 10), and people running browsers other than Microsoft's are just plain outta luck. Linux is out too. Microsoft says that support for other browsers will come later but there have been no assurances that it will support earlier versions of media player or some other portable streaming video format. You can read some of the bitching and moaning here.

UPDATE:

Now CNN is getting in on the act. Video from thier site must play in Windows Media Player V9 or above, but if you are running Firefox, it will not detect that you have Media Player. To Watch Video on thier site, you have to use Internet Explorer so that it can detect WMP.