Why can't I listen to conference calls on Yahoo Finance? (using Mac Safari/Firefox)

October 31, 2008 2:44 AM

Why can't I listen to conference calls on Yahoo Finance? (using Mac Safari/Firefox)

Here is a link of all the day's conference calls. When I click to listen to the audio, my browser goes to a new page and attempts to load the media. Media plays, but all I hear is some light static for a couple seconds, followed by a click - then it goes dead.

This happens in all the calls I try to listen to, whether using Safari or Firefox. Also I tried AOL finance and can't listen there either. I tried upgrading Windows Media player but still no luck. I cannot download the file - only streaming is available.

Can someone suggest a solution?

posted by b_thinky to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

They work for me here, and I have Flip4Mac Windows Media Components installed.

You can download them from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/download/default.asp

Windows Media Player for the Mac is discontinued and was never ever very up to date or useful. The media compents (Flip4Mac) let you play many windows media files inside quicktime. Once you install restart the browser and try again. If this does not fix it, try and install Perian. http://www.perian.org it is a codec that plays a wide range of files types, and it might be why they audio files in question play for me if it is not the Windows Media Components.
posted by OwlBoy at 6:24 AM on October 31, 2008

The easiest way to do this is just open the stream in VLC. Right-click on the "Listen to the archived event audio" and copy the link, open it in VLC and begin playing it by going to File, then Open Network. You can download VLC from videolan.org.
posted by cgomez at 9:17 AM on October 31, 2008

Yes, VLC is a good solution. You can also do the same copy and paste thing with RealPlayer.
posted by OwlBoy at 10:26 AM on October 31, 2008