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OK - how's this?

Back in April, Slashdot reported the announcement of a Universal 3D File Format by Intel, Microsoft & others - to be "as open as MP3". Of course, that's not all that open. And this turns out to be the sneaky part. There is a real open standard already - X3D is ISO-ratified, royalty-free, and has multiple open source implementations. U3D is "going to be submitted to ISO" - one day - but right now they're talking to ECMA, which allows royalty-bearing patents.
I found this article by Tony Parisi, co-chair of the X3D Working Group a fascinating insider's picture of the standards wars, along with insights into what it takes to release an online game, what really killed VRML, and why open standards do (and don't) matter.
I mean, a royalty-bearing, pseudo-open universal 3D format from Intel and Microsoft? Sorry, guys. That trick doesn't work anymore


BTW, I need to get a life.

WTF? When did they... oh, wait. I thought this was Open Standards by Real... nevermind :)

The Slashdot article is here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/14/163521 2&tid=, and the website is http://www.real.com/partners/starz.

Channel 4, for the non-UK types, is a terrestrial broadcast UK tv station, which although has had it's low points, actually has a lot of good quality original shows and documentaries. If I had to choose between the BBC and C4, I'd probably go for the latter. As it happens, I have to choose the latter, as only C4 make some of their programmes available for streaming over the internet.

C4 uses Real for their streaming. I signed up from the US and paid the 5UKP monthly fee. When I tried to view the streams, I was told that they were only available to UK residents. I simply changed my location setting in the account details to say UK, added a UK postcode, then I was able to view the streams without problem. The Texas billing address didn't seem to phase it. It's sad that I have to use this underhand tactic to get at what I'm happily paying for. They could probably make a lot more money if they loosened these artificial restrictions a bit.

It's location-dependent too. But it's worse than that.

Here in the UK it sems that http://www.real.com/ redirects not just to a UK-version of the site, but it goes direct to their "RadioPass" page ("Radio" tab third in a row of 6). And this only has links to their 14-day free trial. You have to go to their "RealPlayer" tab (first in the row, but not what the site defaults to) to get their "Download the Free Player Only" link

Now having location-dependant subsites is all well and good, but I don't like that their apparent "root" site redirects depending on where you are and what you're running. Especially if they don't all have a consistent way of finding the Free Player that people are most-likely to be after.

intentionally hiding the link to download the free RealPlayer (not fixed)

1. Go to http://www.real.com/
2. Look for the huge button right in the middle of your screen (you can't miss it) that says "Download RealPlayer FREE".
3. Give it a click
4. There is no number 4, 'cuz yer already done.

No, he went to http://www.realplayer.com/ instead of http://www.real.com/.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY.

Real has offered a crap-free version of their player for quite some time now, yet every time I read a story about real I hear people bitching about Spyware. Download it, try it, and shut up or don't use it.

Yes it's annoying. But thanks to CarTalk, oddly enough, there is an easy way to get Real's free player. Here is the link provided at Car Talk's website to downloads for the free versions, without any BS. It appears as though it was a condition of Car Talk's returning to Real, from windows media, for streams of its show.

They have a Mac client- here's a list of all clients minus the bullshit you'd get otherwise by going to their home page.

I thought about it and the only explanation I could come up with for why they ignored non-windows clients for so long was that they got too comfortable back in 99-2000 being the most widely distributed player (I think at one point they had almost 90% marketshare of desktop players) and took it for granted. Rather than put effort into a single cross-platform player, they put all their eggs in a combined all in one player built only for Windows. That, along with the horrible mistakes they made in how they delivered the Realone player, how it installed and its overly aggressive means of capturing file types and user info just added to the downfall. Where they used to be number one, they are now like 3rd or 4th.

The first benefit of this was that with the v10 release, all of that crappy install and mime-type hoarding has gone away.

The second benefit of this it that it seems they are finally paying serious attention to Linux and Mac and maybe now will put some equally serious thought into a truly universal player instead of just a marketed "universal" player.

Or, visit this page to see what their "support" of MacOS X is..

http://www.real.com/mac/default.html

What about my freedom of choice to use OS X or Linux? Where is Real's support for those operating systems?

OS X

Linux

Scroll down to the bottom of "www.real.com" and you'll see them, clear as day.

What about my freedom of choice to use OS X or Linux? Where is Real's support for those operating systems?

OS X

Linux

Scroll down to the bottom of "www.real.com" and you'll see them, clear as day.

AFAIK, RealPlayer doesn't come with Windows, so the user has to go and download it, trying desperately to avoid paying for the non-free version.

You're not wrong. But RealMedia is, unfortunately, a known quantity. Even people who don't like it at least know what it does and that it does what it's supposed to (albeit, historically, along with one or two things it wasn't supposed to), whereas many people simply won't have heard of Ogg. And I think this is what sways the decision. That and the fact that it's an all-in-one product. The codec and the software are linked, whereas there is no single official player that runs Ogg - and I do get the feeling that BBC Marketing/management/whoever might not be quite so keen on relying on Winamp or another MP3 player as it's main method of streaming.

I actually think they should stream Ogg Vorbis only and drop the RealAudio streams. Wouldn't that be cheaper in the long run? They can probably use the same hardware they used for encoding the RealAudio streams.

I agree with you. I'm just not convinced that whoever is in charge of the decision-making at BBC would see it the same way any time soon. Plus there's the whole mutual-advertising thing. Real does list the BBC as being one of it's news sources in it's "Real Guide" section - or whatever it's called. So people browsing the site after installing it to get other content might see BBC's name there.

I think it simply hinges that people know "Real". People don't know "Ogg". And Real and BBC seem to have a deal which is mutually beneficial. I don't think the BBC (apart from R&D/Technical) would really benefit from a partnership with Xiph.
I don't like it, and I do agree that using Ogg would probably be better on several levels. Unfortunately for whatever reasons Real seems to do better on whatever criteria the decision-makers use.

There's a new Real Player for Linux! Check it out now.

Get it here (this link points to the free version):

Order: RealPlayer for Mac OS X

The Mac version is amazingly suckage-free. The Windows version, on the other hand... yegh. But then, I only use the winbox for games anyway.

Installation Instructions

- Ensure that the .bin file you downloaded is executable. You can make the .bin file executable by running the "chmod a+x RealPlayer10GOLD.bin" command from a terminal window.

- Run the .bin file by typing "./RealPlayer10GOLD.bin". Follow the prompts provided to finish installing the player.

Rrriiiggghhhttt. Look Ma, we're back in 1993!

2. LICENSE RESTRICTIONS.
a) You may not: (i) permit other individuals to use the Software except under the terms listed above; (ii) modify, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble (except to the extent that this restriction is expressly prohibited by law) or create derivative works based upon the Software or Documentation; (iii) copy the Software or Documentation (except for back-up or archival purposes); (iv) rent, lease, transfer, or otherwise transfer rights to the Software or Documentation; (v) remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Software or Documentation; or (vi) use the MP3 encoder in real time broadcasting (terrestrial, satellite, cable or other media) or broadcasting via the internet or other networks, such as, but not limited to, intranets. You also may not use the RealJukebox MP3 encoder in pay-audio or audio-on-demand applications. Any such forbidden use shall immediately terminate your license to the Software. The recording, playback and download features of the Software are intended only for use with public domain or properly licensed content and content creation tools. You may require a patent, copyright, or other license from a third party to create, copy, download, record or save content files for playback by this Software or to serve or distribute such files to be played back by the Software.
b) You agree that you shall only use the Software and Documentation in a manner that complies with all applicable laws in the jurisdictions in which you use the Software and Documentation, including, but not limited to, applicable restrictions concerning copyright and other intellectual property rights.
c) You may only use the Software for your private, non-commercial use. You may not use the Software in any way to provide, or as part of, any commercial service or application. Copies of content files, including, but not limited to songs and other audio recordings, which are downloaded or copied using the Software, and which are protected by the copyright laws or related laws of any jurisdiction, are for your own personal use only and may not be distributed to third parties or performed outside your normal circle of family and social acquaintances.
d) You may not use the Software in an attempt to, or in conjunction with, any device, program or service designed to circumvent technological measures employed to control access to, or the rights in, a content file or other work protected by the copyright laws of any jurisdiction.
e) The Software embodies a serial copying management system required by the laws of the United States. You may not circumvent or attempt to circumvent this system by any means.

1. Download (multi-threaded) streamed RealAudio w/ NetTransport http://lycos26486.l97.lycos.com.cn/default.htm
2. Convert them to MP3 (or AAC) by sending them to my iPod using RealPlayer 10.5 beta http://www.real.com/harmony/
3. Copy them back to my computer using TotalCommander http://www.wincmd.com/ with the wfx_iPod plugin http://www.jonas-baehr.de/wfx_ipod.php?language=en
4. Retag/rename them iTunes or, even better, with JJ MP3 Renamer http://jj.starthotel.dk/jjsoftware/uk/mp3renamer.h tml

Some statistics: On my IBM Thinkpad A31 with Intel Pentium 4M 1.80Gz + 512MB it took 150 minutes to convert 41 *.rm (21MB, 32Kbps Stereo, approx 90 minutes) into 64Kbps Stereo mp3s that became 41MB each.

Because it is a bit slow, it's a pitty that you can not convert your jobs to a cache and then send them to your iPod; now your iPod is unusable during the convertion.

RealPlayer 10.5 beta allows you to convert files into MP3 (32,56,64,96Kbps - they have link to download hi-bitrate MP3 converters but then you have to pay they say) and AAC/*.m4a (96,128,160,192,256,320Kbps).

BTW: Anyone known alternative freeware RM->MP3 converters? And a command line MP3 read and/or write tagger for Windows?

Here's RealNetworks press release about this system (called Harmony). They also announced that a public beta version of RealPlayer 10.5, which contains this technology, will be available here tomorrow (Tuesday).

I tried downloading a real media player, but my hard drive vomited all over my cable modem.

First off, let me make something crystal clear up-front. I in no way condone the way that the RIAA
has tried to unethically shape our legal landscape, much less the shadier tactics they've employed.

They're scum, no question about it.

However, the other side of the equation is almost pathological. While you have many honest people who simply want to defend their Fair Use rights, you also have a loud, vocal "I want I want I want" community who simply believes that it is eeeee-vil that they should ever have to pay for goods (cds) or services.

there has to be some sort of compromise between the two, and I honestly think this is a first, halting step in the right direction. I don't think much of napster, but I believe that if a university sponsored the use of a service such as Real's Rhapsody service which allowed unlimited streaming (as opposed to a mandatory $X a song) of music, it would be a good compromise between the two posistions. People would have access to a large library of music, and the artists would be recieving compensation.

Hell, if nothing else, the sponsorship of such a program may well help to diminish any credible claims that the RIAA has to push through bizarre and draconian laws.

The bad buffering is because clients all suck so bad. Within the community of hackers working on this stuff nobody has taken on the really crucial job of making a client that doesn't suck. (VLC obviously doesn't suck, and all the components you'd need are there, but there's no SMIL support.)

One I have used for years. I am sure Mr. Irvin Tsnot at Real Networks is wondering why he gets so much junk Email...

Now if they could also bring back the ogg vorbis audio streams they were experimenting with at one point, I would be awfully happy. At the moment there is no choice but to use the proprietary Real Audio, and even though there is a good player for UNIX it still costs the BBC money, when they could go the free route with ogg vorbis and make customers happier too!

They already have it. Real Enterprise (free reg required to download). No ads, works great. If you don't want to post fake information, you can prolly find a copy on P2P, or you can just bitch and moan about the free registration here if you prefer...

"RealNetworks, Inc. Releases Update to Address Security Vulnerabilities.

Updated June 10, 2004

RealNetworks Inc. has recently been made aware of security vulnerabilities that could potentially allow an attacker to run arbitrary code on a user's machine. While we have not received reports of anyone actually being attacked with this exploit, all security vulnerabilities are taken very seriously by RealNetworks Inc. Real has found and fixed the problem.

The specific exploits were:

* To fashion RAM files which corrupt the Player and which might allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on a user's machine. Multiple issues were reported in this area."

If you use User Agent Switcher you can convince the website that you're running IE on Windows. Has anyone used this technique, and then tried the demo service on Linux?

From the website:

Watch at home or on the road
Curl up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn or flip open your
laptop at 30,000 feet. Your downloaded movies are available
whenever and wherever you are.

How is this insightful??? This is a classic case of parent did not RATFL (Read All The Fine Links). They are not streaming the video... You can download them on up to 3 computer and you can watch them unconnected (laptop on the road).

From Real.com (a web page which doesn't load in Mozilla, because it checks my connection rate (without asking)! Rrrrrrr...)

Access over 100 movies for one low monthly fee -- 25 new titles added weekly
Download movies on up to three computers -- take them on the go with your laptop

That's about all the info Real has made available, other than movie titles.

I'm intrigued - now if only it weren't for the "possibility" of DRM sys-crap coming down the pipe, along with the movie . . .

<grrr>

I don't see other popular media players using the standard windows UI. Do you?

The above is a moot point, anyway. Keeping the UI of an application consistent with the UI of all the other apps on a particular OS is very important if you want to increase the rate of adoption. Media players are an exception because just about every media player fux up the UI to a confusing level.

Take the look and feel of another popular open source media player as an example. When my mac buddies look for a video player capable of playing mpeg-2 (or whatever file-type it is they're having problems with that day) if I point them to VLC, they love it! It looks and feels exactly like any other mac application they use, from the metal UI, to the menu at the top of the screen, to the double-clickable .app bundle and high-res icon. They end up accepting it alot more easily than an application that didn't fit the Mac look and feel. Similarly, when you run VLC in Windows, it LOOKS and FEELS like a windows app, and on linux, it LOOKS and FEELS like a linux app. Hell, on BeOS, it looks and feels like a beos app.

I think it would be a step backwards for FireFox to consolidate on a single theme across all platforms.

Check out Real's system requirements. They have players for PPC/Alpha/Sparc Linux.

Did you miss the little bit under the animations??
Both Flash and Real are available for Linux, if you don't want to use them, don't complain because the option is there

*Linux versions of these players are available. Get the free Linux plug-ins for Macromedia Flash and RealPlayer.

That said, as a publicly traded company, we've gotta make money, so you are essentially correct. Our revenue comes mainly from subscriptions these days, with really great growth around our RealRhapsody service. Last quarter, business products and services was $13.9 million out of $60.4 million in total revenue, so the traditional customers that you are thinking of make up a smaller part of our business than many realize.

That said, we've done our part to listen to those customers, and we think our product is much better today.

Rob Lanphier
Development Support Manager
RealNetworks

Moreover, the Helix DNA Producer (also open source) has the sort of pipelining functionality you are talking about.

Rob Lanphier
Developer Support Manager
RealNetworks

are we all going to change our stance because its Apple?

Well, yeah. It's called reputation and it doesn't appear out of thin air; a company needs a good PR team and competitive products to earn it.

Don't worry though, the system is self-fixing - if they annoy their customers beyond a certain point or start behaving like really bad kids, you'll get more Apple-bashing than you can handle. After all, and IIRC that was what happened in the pre-Jobs-comeback era, when the Apple is dying trolls ran rampant.

Please help with bandwidth! Please right click on the links, and choose save target as. These videos are in real audio format. If you do not have real player you can get it for free HERE

I don't see how that would help but I bet it goes down faster thatn a crashing jet airplain.

A couple of days ago, I clicked to view a video on BBC news website and it told me that I have to buy a subscription as international user. I was a bit surprised since so far, BBC had been free and even free from ads.

This page says that: "Broadband video news from the BBC is only available to international users by subscription. Find out how to get the latest broadband video news from the BBC here.

And Real is only fucking humans. (at this time)

I SysAdmin a significantly sized heterogeneous network and to my dismay, I often have to set up new Windows machines and/or reinstall Windows machines.

As an aside, in sysadmin-land, the general rule is to reinstall a machine after someone leaves and/or every two-three years max. Any longer than that and the machine's OS & registry gets too clogged up with crap (among other things) that the machine goes so slow and a complete & clean reinstall is the only way to really regain that lost productivity.

Anyhow, the first 10 or so programs I install on these (primarily w2k) machines are as follows:

• Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (if you don't install this from a cd before you put the machine on the network, you will get a virus).
• Windows Critical & OS Updates
• Netscape
• Adobe Acrobat Reader
• Sophos AV (served over the network via EMLibrary)
• Office 2002/XP including all service packs
• PuTTY
• WinSCP
• Winzip or PowerArchiver
• Shockwave (since I don't allow user admin rights on most clients)
• Google Toolbar (just a convenience)
• Real Player
• ABC Image Browser

It's interesting to me the way the three major players have laid out their strategies for digital music...

The Apple camp exists in a silo, as usual. Music purchased at the iTunes Music Store is only playable in iTunes, and only natively transfers to an iPod family portible.

The Real camp is using their proprietary format for audio that only RealPlayer can play in software, and there's only a limited number of portables that are compatible. In fact, only one of those portables is a true music player, the rest are Palm devices because there's a compatible player for Palm.

But Microsoft's only entering into the game as a software provider. That means there's no Microsoft music store, but everybody major other than Apple and Real are using WMA as the secure format of choice, including Napster, Wal*Mart, and BuyMusic. They've also got the largest selection of compatible players.

Really, going the Microsoft route for your DRMed music collection seems like the best answer to me, because you can then shop arround for the best price on single-track buys, and often find the hot songs for 79 or 88 cents. Who says the price of legal music downloads is going up?

Click on that download link on the right side of the page.

My point is that its not a "Linux Innovation".
And they are Windows Innovations when Apple and Unix were truly first?

Lack of major third party support? Real Player? QuickTime 6.X? The point is that you can't say Mozilla = Linux, so any innovation in Mozilla isn't a Linux innovation.
There is Real Player support for Linux and they contribute to it, just don't officially support it.
QuickTime (and Real) works with most Linux video playback software. You only need to right codec's (which is no different then anything else)
Correct, internet browsers are not a far comparison since only Microsoft considers their browser to be part of the OS, claiming Innovation

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
Thanks for that link, it's a start but still involves the user to build the ISO themselves. Avoiding Microsoft's licensing problems.
Thanks though, I did not realize there was such a project

No we are talking about "Linux innovation" vs. "Windows innovation". If Unix (in general) had it before Linux was even created, then how can it be a Linux innovation?
How can it be a Windows Innovation, also?

Real considers CarTalk to be such an important customer that they made a special download page just for them! It is an easy instant download, with no clutter or advertisements.

http://www.real.com/freeplayer/?rppr=cartalk.com

Now why can't Real just put up this page for everybody? Sadly, if you visit the main site at real.com, you still get the maze of high-pressure sales offers for their "pro" and subscription versions.

BTW, I have found that you can change "rppr" field of the above URL to whatever you want (instead of "cartalk.com") but it can't be left blank. Real will probably put in referrer checking, to prevent people from publishing this link everywhere, so use it while you can....

"On the Mac side things are even more confusing because there is no free download unless you write/call to cancel your 'subscription' within 14 days."

This isn't true. Go to real.com from a Mac, and scroll down -- the link is there. (Yes, it should be more obvious than it is.) The link will take you to this page, where it says very clearly "Thank you for trying our new RealOne Player for OS X. You will not be charged for downloading this software." I have done this and have not been charged or asked to enter credit card info. I gave 'em a fake address, too... out of longstanding habit. ;)

I ended up getting the bloody thing from a mirror, but in return, I will make sure to endorse anything in place of RealAudio -- even .wma.

Is this Real's business model? Drive people away from their technology because nobody can find the damn thing?

This "only 3425 clicks away from the home page" stuff is baloney. Why not use http://www.real.com/freeplayer/?rppr=slashdot ?

You mean this file?

I am listening to RealPlayer version 6.0 on XP Pro, all current patches (on the OS), on a Dell Dimension 2400 (2.8GHz P4, 1GB RAM). RealPlayer will typically run continuously for well over 24 hours, and never "causes a hard lockup of XP"; the menus work just fine. Methinks you should investigate your platform a little more thoroughly.

As an aside, if you don't want v10 you can find older versions of RealPlayer here.