Why JMF ?
JMF API provides a layer of abstraction that
makes multimedia applications platform neutral.
However a particular JMF implementation can
delegate compute-intensive tasks to native
implementations to improve  performance.
Windows performance pack, Solaris performance
pack and cross platform  implementation.
Internet-based multimedia application designer
has to simply adhere to JMF API.
If client machine has JMF performance pack
application will run faster.
Otherwise … applications can still run on cross
platform JMF.