QuickTime Player is Apple's universal and free player and, unfortunately, it is an essential component for a Windows PC because it is used by many streaming websites as an integrated player, both for listening to music and watching online videos. Unfortunately, I say because Quicktime has always been a big program, a little intrusive on the computer, which always tries to update itself and sets itself as the default player for watching videos on the computer.
In addition to this there are numerous functions that can be enabled only by paying the Quicktime Pro version which is absolutely not to be done since there are much better programs.
Furthermore, in some cases, it does not allow the download of mp3 music because it claims to start playback directly from the browser.
Update: Quicktime is no longer updated by Apple in its version for Windows PC; Quicktime is only to be removed and no longer used
I say it is essential because Quicktime integrates into browsers to surf the internet and is often the only player capable of playing streaming movies .
The free version is however able to play all major audio and video formats, including H.264 / MPEG-4 video.
In this article we see how to download Quicktime, not only the original Apple one but also the alternative version, much lighter .
Download Apple Quicktime
The program can be downloaded directly from the Apple web page, both as a stand-alone application and in conjunction with ITunes, another terrible software, heavy and unfortunately obligatory if you own an Iphone or Ipod.
Fortunately, to download Quicktime it is not necessary to share your Email address because you just need to remove the check mark from the registration on the Apple site.
QuickTime update
Since, as mentioned above, Apple often updates its "jewel", after installing Quicktime, every time you use it, it also activates the auto update process that checks whether there is a newer version than the one installed on your computer.
Quicktime can also be updated by pressing on Apple Software Update in the Start menu in the program list or from the Quicktime interface under the "help" menu item.
Luckily you can disable Quicktime automatic updates : go to the player's Edit menu, Quicktime Preferences, " Update " tab and raise the flag from the " automatically check for updates " item.
Among the player preferences there are two other important things.
The first is the removal of the icon on the taskbar next to the clock, the Q which is useless and which starts the QTTask.exe process among the tasks of the computer's task manager.
From the Preferences, to the advanced tab you can remove the icon from the taskbar by removing the cross on the relative item.
The second very annoying thing about quicktime is that it starts the qttask.exe process when the pc starts up, even if the icon has been removed.
This time, unfortunately, there is no option and you have to act through the Windows registry keys.
You should open the registry key editor by going to Start, Run and then writing the word regedit.
Once the window with all the keys opens, navigate on the folder path to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Run .
Within this key, delete the QuickTime Task entry (while you're at it, remove Itunes Helper and Javaupdate as well).
I believe that on Windows no one starts using Quicktime as the default program for watching movies and videos (there are much better players like VLC and the like).
Quicktime, however, serves as a browser plugin and in this use some options can be set.
Always from Quicktime preferences you can choose, on the Browser tab, whether to automatically play videos or not.
For more control, I recommend disabling this option.
In the Streaming tab, on the other hand, you must be careful with the " Enable instantaneous " option, which becomes deleterious if you have a slow connection.
Going to the most important part of the article, since Quicktime is a big and heavy program, you could choose to uninstall it completely.
In its place an unofficial version called Quicktime Alternative has been developed which contains only the essential components of the player, without those extra features that are useless or that are disabled because they are part of the Pro version.
The main advantage of QuickTime Alternative is that it does not run processes in the background and does not weigh down the computer, consuming less resources and less memory .
The QuickTime Alternative version includes the QuickTime codecs extracted from the official distribution, is equipped with its own player, using Media Player Classic, and provides what is most needed, the QuickTime plugins for all the main browsers in order to support audio and video streaming.
There is no danger of falling behind with the versions because the latest alternative QT is based on the current one.
It is available for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.
As an "alternative" version of Quicktime there is also QT Lite which is dentic but does not contain the Media Player Classic for playing videos.
Since QT should not serve us except as a browser plugin, then the QT LIte may be more than enough.
I had already talked about Quicktime Player because it is not the only big and popular program to have an alternative version, in fact on another page there are Real Player Alternative and ITunes Lite.
