That’s big corporate for you.

I know how you feel. I downloaded BBC’s HD 1080p video from the HD Gallery
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/hdgallery/
and my iMac G5 wouldn’t play it smoothly. Not only that, but it wouldn’t even fit on the 20 screen!

I think perhaps it’s less about QT7 and more about codecs. True, you probably need some power to play large format H.264, but then my large format 3ivx movies that played fine on a G4 would also crash out a G3. (Large format = 1024 by whatever). Compression means you can have smaller file sizes without losing quality if you pay the price in processing power. Check the rather humbling specs:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime.....tions.html

On a very positive note: I couldn’t output 20 minute videos to QT viewering copies without losing audio sync. QuickTime Mpeg2 wouldn’t do it; 3ivx wouldn’t do it; and burning to DVD would do one project but not another (due to rather extreme quick cuts from light to dark and sound to silence). With *this* project, even the DVD dramatically lost sync as soon as it hit this section. And yet, QT7 and H.264 did the job perfectly.

This is not sour grapes. I have occasional access to a iMac G5 1.8 gHz, and was playing the Keynote on it, with it’s usual complement of programs open (about 20, depending on how you count), but not doing anything, in the background.

Choppy. Aweful aliasing and other gunge. Very poor. Yes, the picture is spectacular when it is working, by that is simply not often enough.

I just don’t understand how H.264 is supposed to scale from cell phones (which have processors weaker than my computer).

If you get sick of Quicktime Basic/NotPro bugging you about upgrading, set the date of your computer a year in advance, then run quicktime and choose “Later” when it bugs you.

Then when you change your date back to normal it won’t bug you until later – one year + 1 day from now.