thebitterguy

There are a few ways that an application on a Mac can know which files it can look at, and which it cannot. It's highly likely that the CD was not created in a completely Mac-friendly manner, or in a manner which modern Macs don't particularly pay attention to anymore.

You may have success by opening the CD in your Finder, and copying the files to another location (i.e. on your hard-drive) and then trying to open them from there. It's entirely possible that the files may not be particularly compatible with a modern version of QuickTime, as they may use a codec that isn't particularly included in your modern version of QuickTime.

Having QuickTime Pro might help, but I hesitate to recommend you buy yourself a license without knowing that this would solve the problem.

If you copy one of the files onto you hard-drive, open a Terminal window, and then use the "files" command on it, you should see what the little magic cookies at the start of the file claim that the file is (although I'm not sure that it would give you rich enough information to know exactly what codec could read/decode the file).

You could try using the VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) media players to look at the files, or installing the Flip4Mac (http://www.flip4mac.com/) and/or Perian (Perian) QuickTime components. These bits of additional software might give you a better chance to get at the media content (if, for example, it uses a traditionally Windows-based codec).