Linking to a mp4 / video file.. please check this out

Question

getting frustrated with this..
go to this page..
www.thedailypodvid.com/archive
this is just an experiment - look at the three files - they seem to be identical in type and extension.. BUT, the bottom two do not load properly?? BEWARE, first file is of slight adult nature.
Is it because of the type of webserver it is on?? i just want to link to these files so people can download..
thansk in advance!!
PB 17", IB 14"   Mac OS X (10.4)  
PM 1.6   Mac OS X (10.4)  

Answer 1

Note that there are and will be many other players which can play mp4 files (Mplayer, VLC media player, RealPlayer). So it is good practise to always provide additional download link in cases when you use QuickTime plug-in to embed mp4 files. (and when we are in here for mp4 embed you can even create script which checks if QuickTime is installed, if not try RealPlayer, and only after that provide QuickTime Player/plug-in download)
For plain links just make sure that your server sends correct MIME-type video/mp4 for .mp4 extension.
Send the following message to your server administrator:
“I am putting an MP4 video on my Web site, but your Web server doesn’t support this file type. Could you make sure files with an .mp4 extension are mapped to MIME type video/mp4.”
If your server is apache then you can also try to add following line to your .htaccess file
AddType video/mp4 mp4
Additionally if you want to try force download dialog, instead Quicktime(when available) playing mp4 directly in empty browser window, after clicking link, you can use Content-Disposition header. For example add following to .htaccess (Note that headers module must be in use)
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
<Files "*.mp4">
SetEnvIf Request_URI "/([^>*)$" IT=$1
header set Content-Disposition "attachment; filename=\"%{IT}e\"
</Files>
  Windows XP Pro