What's WMV HD

Windows Media High Definition Video (WMV HD) is the marketing name for high definition videos encoded using Microsoft Windows Media Video 9 codecs. These low-complexity codecs make it possible to watch high definition movies in 1280x720 (720p) or 1920x1080 (1080p) resolutions on many modern personal computers running Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista, although the hardware requirements are steep. Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's Playstation 3 video game consoles can also play WMV HD.

How to play HD WMVon Mac

VLC plays WMV videos but it does not support WMV HD. So if you play HD WMVwith VLC, the audio will be missing.

QuickTime and Flip4Mac can play HD WMVon your Mac.

Windows Media Player 9 for Mac is developed by Microsoft for Mac users to playback both local and streamed WMV and WMA files. It supports WMV 9 codecs. But not all HD WMVencoding with WMV 9 codecs can be played on Mac.

If the video is downloaded from Microsoft's HD WMVContent Showcase, the video's extension will be .exe and it can't be played on Mac. In such cases, you need to extract the .exe file on a PC using WinRAR. When the extraction is done, transfer the HD WMVvideo to Mac and you can play it with Windows Media Player 9 for Mac or using QuickTime+Flip4Mac.