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To use QuickTime Player, go to 'Open URL' in the 'File' menu and enter the stream's URL in the 'Movie URL' box, then click OK.
To use VLC, go to 'Open Stream' from the 'File' menu, select the 'RTSP' option, and enter the stream's URL in the 'URL' box, then click OK.
Connect to this test stream URL: rtsp://live1.vaguetv.com:554/fadaiat.sdp
Note, when connecting to QuickTime streams, please wait for a few seconds (perhaps even 10 seconds) whilst the stream loads. You may well see the entire image being green for about the first two or three seconds once connected, this is normal and things will soon sort themselves out.
QuickTime is Apple's platform for video production, reproduction and broadcast. It is a suite comprising of four applications: QT Player - to reproduce video and audio files and streams, QT Broadcaster - to send streams to a server, QT Streaming Server - to receive and broadcast streams and QT Pro - to author QT video files. The first three are all available for free and this therefore makes it a good platform for streaming. We use Apple's Open Source version of QT Streaming server on Debian GNU/Linux: Darwin Streaming Server.
The main drawback of QuickTime for us is that Apple does not currently produce a version of their player for Linux, nor a version of their browser plug-in for Linux web browsers - to say nothing of the BSD variants. There are instructions below on how you might achieve reproducing QuickTime on Linux below. You can always contact Apple and let them know how much you'd like a player for Linux.
Note: to watch and listen to these streams, we always recommend you have the latest version of QT Player available. We use MPEG-4 encoding for our streams as it offers very good compression, but it's relatively new and therefore you'll need version 6.x of the player or later.
As one might have guessed, there should be no problem connecting to QuickTime streams with a Machintosh - both OS 8/9 and X. The player should come pre-installed with your computer, but if you don't have it or have an older version, you can download it from Apple's web site. On Mac OS X we've tested the plug-in with most of the browsers available and it works with all.
As an alternative to QT Player, try VideoLAN Client. One benefit is that it displays output in full screen, which you can only get with QT Player by registering it as the Pro version and paying them cash (or obtaining someone else's registration code, but obviously we don't recommend doing that! ;)).
Again, like for the Mac, there should be no problem connecting to QuickTime streams with Windows as Apple make a player and plug-in for this platform. Note that Windows rarely comes with QuickTime pre-installed, so you'll have to download it from Apple's web site. On Windows we've tested the plug-in with most of the browsers available and it works with all.
Again, like the Mac, VideoLAN Client makes for a good alternative to Apple's player.
As mentioned above, Apple helpfully doesn't provide any client application for Linux, which is slightly daft seeing as they do provide a version of their streaming server for Linux. Only time will tell if they see fit to do so, we hope they do.
There are several applications for Linux which should in theory (MPEG4IP, MPlayer) but the one that seems to be the most reliable is again VLC. You will probably already have this on your system, but if not, download it from here. We're running Debian 3.1 (sid) at the moment with version 0.8.2-svn of VLC and it works fine.
We'd be interested in your feedback on how you get on with QuickTime and Linux, so that we can improve these instructions. Thanks.
Article copyright (c) 2004 - 2006 Radio Vague and Vague TV. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".