After a couple days of trying to figure it out - I finally stumbled across a solution to play WMV videos on an Intel Mac. I don't normally have much use for WMVs, but CNN's videos are all WMV encoded, and it's been annoying at best not being able to view some of their stories.

First, download the free edition of Flip4Mac, a WMV player for PPC Macs. If you launch the installer, you'll get a notice saying it cannot install on Intel Macs.

To get past this, open a Finder window and locate the Installer application in Applications->Utilities. Highligh the application and press CMD+I to open the info window. You'll see a checkbox to "Open using Rosetta". Check this box and close the window. You can now install Flip4Mac on your Intel Mac.

You must similarly check the "Open using Rosetta" for the QuickTime Player application, which you'll find in the Applications folder.

That's basically all there is to it! If you wish to view media files directly in your browser, enable "Open using Rosetta" for your browser application. The same approach should work equally well for any application you wish to have play WMV's.

Note: this solution is only temporary, as Flip4Mac is currently working on a Universal Binary that'll play your media directly - so take note of any applications you launch using Rosetta so you can change them back once it's no longer needed.