To be fully utilizable for end users, the MPEG plug-in still needs some fixing, but it is quite acceptable as a demonstration version. Most important, it fails on some MPEG-2 streams. This is true only when the mpeg_play library is used as a plug-in, not when running in a stand-alone test program. The cause for this problem is not known. The plug-in also lacks features expected in a high end commercial MPEG player, most notably sound. On Unix platforms, implementing portable audio is harder than implementing video, as there is no widely agreed upon interface to sound hardware. Also, sound handling must be implemented from scratch, as the original mpeg_play program had no support for it.
Another feature worth implementing, is the option to save the MPEG stream to a local file while playing, to enable rewinding, looping and faster playback. At the moment we can get around this by ordering Navigator to download the file before handing it to the plug-in, but it is impossible to play it at the same time it is downloaded to a file.
When sharing Navigator's colormap, the coloring of the movie is quite unacceptable. This could be fixed by implementing a smarter color allocation algorithm, and by making the dithering functions aware that the colors are not exactly matched. A better approach is to make Netscape extend their API to let plug-ins cooperate with Navigator on color allocation.
The performance seems to be more depending on the network connection than on the power of the CPU. For local files, the Navigator plug-in is approximately as fast as the mpeg_play program that it originated from.