Viewpoint Media Player
Viewpoint Media Player (VMP) is a browser graphics rendering plug-in originally produced by Viewpoint Corporation, the Consumer Products division of Enliven Marketing Technologies Corporation (Nasdaq: ENLV). It is commonly installed with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and various other software.
Description
Viewpoint Media Player is a web browser plug-in that enables users to view 3D content and other rich media, such as Flash content and video, on the Internet. Viewpoint Media Player is included with AOL Instant Greetings, AIM Themes and some other web applications. Viewpoint Media Player is distributed with AOL, AIM, versions of Netscape, certain Adobe products, and some retail computers sold today.
A few companies, ranging from online retailers to auto manufacturers, use Viewpoint Media Player as the graphics platform for interactive 3D tours of their products. Viewpoint Media Player powers product tours of the Toyota 4Runner and Sony laptop, desktop, and server computing products. In 2004, the player was used to power the Scion configurator on the Build Your Scion website, which won the People's Voice Webby Award in the Automotive category.[1]
Features
- Integration and playback of various media:
- Animated & procedural 3D models
- Video (On2 VP7 codec)
- Vector graphics (Flash SWF & SVG)
- Image formats including JPEG, GIF and Wavelet
- High-resolution 2D images (JPEG Zoomview)
- Audio, including Ogg Vorbis, SC6, MP3
- 3D effects (Lens flare, "Soft Body", PhotoVR, Capture, Mirrors)
- JavaScript interpreter
- Hyperview 2.0
- Layers compositors tool
- Mac OS X–compatible
- Browser-independent
- Automatic updating
- All objects are accessible through a DOM and are scriptable.
- Rendering and decoding engines
- No server components required
Adware concerns
Viewpoint Media Player is sometimes claimed to be adware.[2] This is often due to it being installed with America Online, Netscape, and Adobe software, without the user realizing it will be installed (it is required by these programs for correct operation).[3] Although it does not directly collect user identifiable information, the license agreement states that the software collects information about users' interactions with advertisements and the browser and operating system in use. This information is collected by Viewpoint along with a unique identifying code.[4]
External links