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Rollie Hawk writes "Want some free music? Silly question, I know. But how about legally? That's exactly what RealNetworks is offering. You may remember RealNetworks from about ten years ago when it was one of the leaders in audio streaming technology. After a decade of steaming becoming more widespread in both audience and medium, RealNetworks' RealPlayer has become an embarrassment to even try installing. This, however, didn't stop them from jumping into the post-Napster song-swapping vacuum with their Rhapsody program. I can't comment on how good Rhapsody is since I've never met anyone who used it. That probably says enough right there. In an attempt to rev-up their subscription-based music service, they are now resorting to giving away 25 songs each month. According to RealNetworks chairman and chief executive Rob Glaser, "by having a free service that is legal, it flattens the issue of 'Why use an illegal service?'" Perhaps that logic would hold more weight if the universe of music contained only 25 songs."

SlimySlimy writes "This month, streaming audio turns 10. Though first introduced by Real, streaming multimedia is so commonplace today it's hard to believe that it didn't even exist 10 years ago. In line with one of their previous press releases, RealNetworks has released a mysterious website and letter from CEO Rob Glaser celebrating 10 years of Internet streaming audio, as well as announcing a yet-to-be-revealed 'revolution' in digital media. 'On April 26, we are changing the rules of the Internet again, and digital music will never be the same.' Here is their press release from 1995 (when they were still Progressive Networks) announcing the first streaming Internet multimedia."

RealNetworks has always been more Linux-friendly than other streaming media purveyors, and is now moving closer to the open source camp with its Helix Community effort. More recently, Real has made a big media splash by selling downloadable tunes in an iPod-compatible format. Does any of this matter, considering that world + dog seems to be jumping on the downloadable multimedia bandwagon? Can Real once again become "the" streaming media leader? Will Real's 49 cent "limited time only" song download price force other music download vendors to cut their prices? We have no idea, but hopefully Rob Glaser does. He's promised to answer your questions personally (rather than have PR people speak for him). So ask whatever you like. We'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated questions to him by email and post his answers soon after he gets them back to us.

RealNetworks has always been more Linux-friendly than other streaming media purveyors, and is now moving closer to the open source camp with its Helix Community effort. More recently, Real has made a big media splash by selling downloadable tunes in an iPod-compatible format. Does any of this matter, considering that world + dog seems to be jumping on the downloadable multimedia bandwagon? Can Real once again become "the" streaming media leader? Will Real's 49 cent "limited time only" song download price force other music download vendors to cut their prices? We have no idea, but hopefully Rob Glaser does. He's promised to answer your questions personally (rather than have PR people speak for him). So ask whatever you like. We'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated questions to him by email and post his answers soon after he gets them back to us.

RealNetworks has always been more Linux-friendly than other streaming media purveyors, and is now moving closer to the open source camp with its Helix Community effort. More recently, Real has made a big media splash by selling downloadable tunes in an iPod-compatible format. Does any of this matter, considering that world + dog seems to be jumping on the downloadable multimedia bandwagon? Can Real once again become "the" streaming media leader? Will Real's 49 cent "limited time only" song download price force other music download vendors to cut their prices? We have no idea, but hopefully Rob Glaser does. He's promised to answer your questions personally (rather than have PR people speak for him). So ask whatever you like. We'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated questions to him by email and post his answers soon after he gets them back to us.

BileDog writes "RealNetworks today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Seattle-based GameHouse, Inc., a top developer, publisher and distributor of downloadable PC games, in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $35.6 million. Seems that online 'casual gaming' creators are starting to consolidate in a similar way to their offline counterparts." PC World has further comments on this deal, explaining: "RealNetworks' RealArcade competes with products such as Microsoft's MSN Games, Yahoo Games, and Pogo.com from Electronic Arts", and including an analyst's comments that: "By acquiring GameHouse, RealNetworks now has control over the content and no longer has to depend on what third parties develop." Apparently, full control over Thomas Kinkade online jigsaws is pretty important in reaching the true mass market.

elaineg writes "We're happy to announce the 2003 Helix Community Grant Program winners for development of open source projects on Helix. They are to UC Santa Barbara for providing robust multicast support in Helix, the Justin Karneges and Ulrich Staudinger at the Jabber Foundation for Jabber/Helix integration, Robert Kaye at MusicBrainz for integrated metadata cleanup in the Helix DNA Client, Jesse Schell at Carnegie Mellon University for integrating the Panda3D game and simulation engine with Helix, and the Xiph.org Foundation for further R&D and support of Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora codecs, including Helix DNA platform integration. More details can be found in the press release. Also, in vaguely related news, we've released Milestone 2 of the Helix Player for Linux." Helix styles itself as "the first open multi-format platform for digital media creation, delivery and playback", and has been created by Real Networks.

waaka! writes "Hydrogenaudio has just wrapped up a listening test of various audio codecs at 64kbps. Check out the results, where Ogg Vorbis performed quite well, scoring significantly better than WMA, RealAudio and QuickTime AAC, and kept pace with MP3Pro and HE-AAC (AAC with the SBR extensions that MP3Pro uses). Clearly, though, no codec can honestly claim 128 kbps MP3 quality at 64 kbps. The charts at the end show entries for 128kbps LAME MP3 and 64kbps FhG MP3, but these are used as high and low anchors for reference, as MP3 is really out of its league at bitrates such as these."

Rob Lanphier writes "RealNetworks made two announcements at LinuxWorld this week: we will be giving out up to $75,000 by the end of the year for development of open source projects based on the Helix multimedia platform. Also, we just formally launched the Helix Player project, which is a project to build a GTK+ based user interface for Linux, Solaris, and other UNIXy operating systems. Press releases for the grant program here and player project here"

Rob Lanphier writes "RealNetworks made two announcements at LinuxWorld this week: we will be giving out up to $75,000 by the end of the year for development of open source projects based on the Helix multimedia platform. Also, we just formally launched the Helix Player project, which is a project to build a GTK+ based user interface for Linux, Solaris, and other UNIXy operating systems. Press releases for the grant program here and player project here"

Rob Lanphier writes "RealNetworks just released the source code to their SMIL 2.0 implementation (along with JPEG, GIF, PNG, and WBMP implementations) as part of the Helix Community initiative, under the OSI-approved RPSL. Some neat tricks to do with the code: superimpose images on top of video, or transition effects between videos, using standard W3C-defined markup. More tech details in the Helix community datatype project page, or look at the SMIL production topics page. A precompiled release with this code will be coming out very soon."

Rob Lanphier writes "RealNetworks just released the source code to their SMIL 2.0 implementation (along with JPEG, GIF, PNG, and WBMP implementations) as part of the Helix Community initiative, under the OSI-approved RPSL. Some neat tricks to do with the code: superimpose images on top of video, or transition effects between videos, using standard W3C-defined markup. More tech details in the Helix community datatype project page, or look at the SMIL production topics page. A precompiled release with this code will be coming out very soon."

fupeg writes "Spurred on by Apple's success, as well as their own purchase of listen.com, Real Networks announced their own online music service, dubbed RealOne Rhapsody. Here is the press release. They're offering songs at $0.79 per song, but with a $9.99/month subscription. The first two months are free. The press release says that 2/3 of their 300,000 song catalog is available for CD burning, while everything is available for 'on-demand' listening."

fupeg writes "Spurred on by Apple's success, as well as their own purchase of listen.com, Real Networks announced their own online music service, dubbed RealOne Rhapsody. Here is the press release. They're offering songs at $0.79 per song, but with a $9.99/month subscription. The first two months are free. The press release says that 2/3 of their 300,000 song catalog is available for CD burning, while everything is available for 'on-demand' listening."

superflex writes "CNet and others have articles today related to a story that appeared here a couple months ago regarding Acacia Media Technologies, who hold several U.S. and international patents that they claim give them exclusive rights to compressed digital media transmission technologies. The previous article, for the lazy among you, was an AskSlashdot about whether the askers' pr0n site should pay license fees to these guys. Seems that since then, they've moved on to some internet radio sites, and are actually getting fees out of them. Their claims haven't been challenged in court yet, but they appear very broad, possibly covering PPV on cable/satellite as well as internet-based streaming. One wonders if they might try going after one of the big boys soon."

Rob Lanphier writes "RealNetworks just released the Helix DNA Server source code, the main engine powering the RealNetworks' Helix Universal Server (nee RealServer). Additionally, the RealNetworks' Public Source License (RPSL) just became approved as an Open Source Initiative (OSI) certified license. Speaking of which, the Helix DNA Server is available under RPSL (which wasn't originally our stated intention). Ask questions via IRC during our live webcast at 11am PST (19:00 GMT) or just read the press release."

Cinematique writes "C|Net is reporting that RealNetworks has released a format-independent Digital Rights Management software called Helix DRM. Real states that MP3, AAC, and even OGG can now be released with a DRM wrapper. And this is groundbreaking how? More importantly, do they expect content producers and consumers alike to really adopt this?"

Rob Lanphier writes "We just released the Helix DNA Producer, a multi-format media-encoding engine for creating streaming broadcasts, on-demand streaming content, and downloadable audio video files. It supports RealAudio, RealVideo and Ogg Vorbis, and includes many input and output filters, variable bitrate encoding support, option for two-pass encoding, audio gain control, Firewire support. Press release is here and a couple of stories are here(1) and here(2)." Here's a page that details the licenses under which the code can be obtained.

Rob Lanphier writes "We just released the Helix DNA Producer, a multi-format media-encoding engine for creating streaming broadcasts, on-demand streaming content, and downloadable audio video files. It supports RealAudio, RealVideo and Ogg Vorbis, and includes many input and output filters, variable bitrate encoding support, option for two-pass encoding, audio gain control, Firewire support. Press release is here and a couple of stories are here(1) and here(2)." Here's a page that details the licenses under which the code can be obtained.

Rob Lanphier writes "We just released the Helix DNA Producer, a multi-format media-encoding engine for creating streaming broadcasts, on-demand streaming content, and downloadable audio video files. It supports RealAudio, RealVideo and Ogg Vorbis, and includes many input and output filters, variable bitrate encoding support, option for two-pass encoding, audio gain control, Firewire support. Press release is here and a couple of stories are here(1) and here(2)." Here's a page that details the licenses under which the code can be obtained.

Skuto writes "Following the example of AOL with Winamp, RealNetworks has decided to give Ogg Vorbis their sign of approval and will be including support into their player software. The press release has more information. Meanwhile, independent listening tests are being set up to determine how well Vorbis fares against its competitors WMA, AAC and MP3Pro. You can help by signing up for the tests here." A couple of comments (1, 2) in our previous story provide the best description of what Real is doing, if you missed them.

chill writes "CNN is reporting "RealNetworks on Monday will unveil a new open source version of its streaming media software that supports multiple file formats for audio and video, including those that use Microsoft's Windows Media technology." and "RealNetworks did not formally license the ability to offer Windows Media software, but instead re-created the technology based on data streams sent between the server and player software, The New York Times reported. A Microsoft representative told the newspaper that the company would need to determine whether RealNetworks licensed the software before taking action. " I can't wait to see the actual license." Update: 07/22 19:10 GMT by T : The software can be downloaded from the Helix site, if you're interested.

dirkmuon asks: "The streaming video shootout on Network Computing and the subsequent Slashdot discussion touched upon the process of creating and streaming live content on Linux. The article mentioned one method that required $1000 worth of hardware, not including the camera or the Windows 2000 box. Has anyone devised a simple, specific mix of Linux software and hardware for serving up a live video feed, particularly a method that costs less than $1000? RealSystem Producer Basic and Server Basic with a capture card would cost less, obviously, but are there other solutions? For example, is there a Linux way to broadcast *live* video with the Darwin Streaming Server?" This topic was discussed over a year ago, and the answers weren't very encouraging: Real is expensive; Darwin is great but you can't watch the movies in Linux; and Microsoft Media for Linux is vaporware (and likely to stay that way). Has that year improved the outlook?

dirkmuon asks: "The streaming video shootout on Network Computing and the subsequent Slashdot discussion touched upon the process of creating and streaming live content on Linux. The article mentioned one method that required $1000 worth of hardware, not including the camera or the Windows 2000 box. Has anyone devised a simple, specific mix of Linux software and hardware for serving up a live video feed, particularly a method that costs less than $1000? RealSystem Producer Basic and Server Basic with a capture card would cost less, obviously, but are there other solutions? For example, is there a Linux way to broadcast *live* video with the Darwin Streaming Server?" This topic was discussed over a year ago, and the answers weren't very encouraging: Real is expensive; Darwin is great but you can't watch the movies in Linux; and Microsoft Media for Linux is vaporware (and likely to stay that way). Has that year improved the outlook?

Will in Seattle writes "cNet has a story on RealNetworks using code from Mozilla.org's open-source browser code in a private-label version of its media player and server for Web broadcaster Global Media. This version lets RealNetworks' system stream and display Web elements including HTML and Macromedia Flash animation files, and you can download their mods here. "

Will in Seattle writes "cNet has a story on RealNetworks using code from Mozilla.org's open-source browser code in a private-label version of its media player and server for Web broadcaster Global Media. This version lets RealNetworks' system stream and display Web elements including HTML and Macromedia Flash animation files, and you can download their mods here. "

Wired revealed this morning a "New Privacy Glitch" which may actually be years old. Real Networks' RealJukebox isn't its only software to send a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID): RealPlayer does too. The free RealPlayer has 69 million users of all its versions; Real isn't saying which versions send the GUID. It's sad when the "good news" is that RealPlayer doesn't scan your hard drive. Oh - and by the way - Windows Media Player sends one too but it's OK because registration is not required. Are we living in cuckooland? Update: 11/08 08:44 by J : On the just-launched real.com site, their Software Privacy Statement says: "the Globally Unique Identifier - GUID has been disabled for electronic registration so it cannot be used to identify you." This is for RealPlayer 7: still, apparently, no word on earlier versions.