Hi elianamoran

The questions you ask are somewhat difficult to reply to with a definitive answer, however I will give you answers based on my own experience. First of all, you asked:I have four media players, GOM, VLC, WMP and Quicktime. I use GOM when VLC can't play or play properly a film media file. I use WMP primarily to play MP3s I purchase from Amazon and finally I use Quicktime to play film trailers of new films, like those hosted by "Rotten Tomatoes". Are they necessary, I believe so because no one media player can play all the media files you will come across.

You also askedSilverlight is an underlying video technology that allow you to play certain videos, like Flash allows you to play YouTube videos.

I can't say what videos you need it for in the US but here in the UK silverlight is used by certain TV companies so that you can "Catch Up" on programmes you have missed by using their particular player, e.g. ITV Player.

I've tried to answer a couple of your questions and I will try to get back to the others as soon as I can.



UK Bob

thanks guys, you're being really helpful!

Hi elianamoran

The last question I will try to answer is:Air and Flash are two different things but both are developed by Adobe. Flash, as you now know, is needed so that you can watch FLV videos online. However, Air is something more fundamental, it is an enabling technology that allows other online software to work. In other words, if you can imagine these applications as working in layers then they would be like this, 1 - Your O/S, 2 - AIR, 3 - Flash, 4 - Browser and 5 - Internet/Web player (like YouTube) or special application.

Here is the link to Adobe's AIR page web application, desktop application | Adobe AIR

Hope this helps



UK Bob

thanks, that makes sense