The pop-up player, used for live video and audio, is a Watch or Listen icon which launches a player in a separate internet window and requires Real Player or WindowMediaPlayer to work.
Click the icon at the top of a window, and the computer will resize the window so you have room to view a browser and Windows MediaPlayer, for example.
The issue is an Adobe software called Flash, which does many things, most notably letting Web surfers view streaming video inside a browser window. (As opposed to downloading the file and then playing it with something like Windows MediaPlayer.) For a long time, this was the easiest way for Web sites to deliver video, and Flash has been almost universally adopted.
Playback is limited to the native mediaplayer -- no YouTube greatest hits on top of your email just yet -- but the window can be moved around the screen and at its fixed size covers just under a sixth of the full screen.