Why are most audio/video files only available in Real Media? What about open source formats?
MIT OpenCourseWare strives to make the free course materials on this site available to as many people around the world as possible. We use information such as industry trends, standard installation packages, and data provided by our traffic logs to determine which media and other file formats will be accessible by the most users. When OCW began in 2002, the most widely available streaming media player was Real Media, and we developed our materials accordingly (streaming is important to us, as we believe low-bandwidth users should not be required to download an entire video file before viewing). Even in the short time since OCW’s launch, the web media market has matured and now offers a wide range of options to users all over the world. Accordingly, we have begun to offer MPEG4 videos, and plan to introduce Flash soon. In the mean time, you can download many of our videos from iTunes (http://web.mit.edu/itunesu) and YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/mit). As we create new video and audio
