quictime tells me I need the required compressor to play a movie that I download. where do I get this?

what kind of file is it that you are trying to play?

avi

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/overview/plugin.html That should do it, I think.

Unless it's a DivX movie (in which case you'll need the Mac version 6.3 of Windows Media Player along with a DivX hack) then the only other codec you might need can be found here:

http://www.versiontracker.com/morein...id=2181&db=mac

I don't think avi uses Divx.

Think again. DivX is a CODEC. AVI is a FILE FORMAT. ALL DivX files that you see out there will have a ".AVI" file extension.

Hm, all the files i've encountered that needed Divx were MPEG's.

Matter of fact, I just went to Divx's site, which specifically states it's used for compressing MPEG-2's. No mention of anything about avi. Yeah, I sure did think again! You?

Would you care perhaps to explain your pithy explanation about how since Divx is a Codec and avi is a file format, how exactly that translates into all Divx files will have an avi extension? If you don't know your stuff, maybe you should just keep quiet and leave it for the big boys.