No Picture

Hi all! I am very new here & in fact a new mac user having just gotten this macbook on Saturday. I have been trying to download movies all weekend. When I get 1% downloaded, I ask it to preview so I can see that it's what I want and of good quality. My problem is that it opens quicktime and shows me no picture or sound, but the little timing bar runs across the bottom of the screen like everything is fine. Sometimes I get a message telling me I need new software for quicktime. I've downloaded Divx, it hasn't done anything. I also asked it to look for new updates & it didn't have any. No one seems to have any answers at all for me, so I thought I'd try here. BTW, all the movies I have tried to download (a total of 3) have been avi format. Thanks for any suggestions! ~Lisa

Hi Lisa

.avi formats can vary, and some old one just wont play on OS X.

Get VLC. If Quicktime and VLC won't open the file, then the file is usually too much work for me to bother trying to open.

VLC is a free player available at VLC media player for Mac OS X

VLC is excellent, its interface is far better than mPlayer as far as the interface (unless you build your own from the free source--for very advanced users). That said, mPlayer does seem to be better at some audio and video formats., look for

mPlayer
"MPlayer OS X 1.0rc1": MPlayer - The Movie Player

Also, you can expand QuickTime's range of files by installing Perian and Flip4Mac:

Perian: Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime® components

Flip4Mac wmv/wma plugin: Flip4Mac - Digital Media Tools for the Mac