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RealPlayer 7 Beta for Linux
Dobromir Montauk wrote to us to say that Real has released the new RealPlayer 7 beta for glibc 2.0. The installation seems to be nicer than the last one, with support of mime types amongst other improvements. Now, if it doesn't crash my browser, we'll be getting somewhere.
Oops, I mean excellent player... :)
Hetz (Heunique)
I agree it looks like crap, though. RealPlayer just doesn't have that much GUI (just a few menus and a preferences panel) so it would be easy to have both Motif and GTK versions of it. That's not where the majority of the code is.
Can someone tell me if they're also gone in the Macintosh and Windows versions?
OTOH, it does seem to play video better than that last version, even at low data rates.
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
I installed the non-RPM version on my RedHat 6.0 box, and everything seems to work very well. The G2 beta would ping the CPU utilization on my 333mhz celeron box, but this RealPlayer7 beta is only taking up 1-2% of my CPU at most. Very nice.
Real has obviously been working on this one for a very long time (hence the mention of glibc 2.0 in the docs), and it seems like they've gotten it right. The player doesn't have nearly as many options in the preferences dialog as the Windows version, and I've noticed a GUI glitch (the percent complete bar seems to go to infinity when playing a live stream source) already, but it is so much better than the old G2 beta.
And for those who are concerned about Real's privacy protections, take a look at the latest Windows RealPlayer.. they have a many-tabbed dialog which discusses *everything* that could be in the slightest way privacy related, with full explanations and an opt-out for everything. It looks like the Linux version isn't quite as refined, but Real seems to be putting their heart in the right place on this one. I actually had a short email conversation with a person at Real who was involved with their privacy policy for Real7, and they really do seem to have gotten religion on this one.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Underneath the big headline of "RealPlayer for LINUX" people seem to have overlooked the fact that a beta for Solaris was also released.
The list of new betas is:
Solaris 2.6 (Sparc only)
Solaris 2.7 (Sparc only)
Red Hat Linux 6.0 (i386 only) RPM
Red Hat Linux 6.0 (i386 only) non-RPM
What I am sad to see is the lack of IRIX. I use SGIs at work, and RealPlayer 5.0 is just not cutting it. RealPlayer either can't support the formats or crashes.
A couple of months from now, SGI will be moving toward Linux for their desktop boxes, so I guess I will have to wait 'til then.
--Ivan, weenie NT4 user: bite me!
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
"Computers are nothing but a perfect illusion of order" -- Iggy Pop
Actually, Microsofts main threat to their competition isn't that they bundle to player with their OS (although that's a good sized portion of it), it's that they actually PAY streaming media companies to switch to Windows media, in the form of actually purchasing boxes for them, installing them, paying for their bandwidth, and sending techs on site to troubleshoot.
It that's not unfair and leveraging from one market to another, i don't know what is. I mean, what - you can either serve in RealMedia, make people download a player, and then go and buy the server software, or you can serve Windows media, and if your site is large enough, actually GET PAID to use it.
Can't wait til some class action or something actually drains microsofts coffers a little bit so they have to once again compete on merit rather than just the fact that they have enough money to keep going and going and going long after their competition has gone bankrupt trying to compete with free and subsidized products.
Another product subisidy of theirs, coincidentally, is Windows 2000. All those success stories you read in the ads, those are all basically paid for by microsoft, who sends in tons of techs to get Win2000 running, and doesn't charge a dime for the privelegde, aside from being able to say "HEY! This company had enough confidence in our software to switch."
New strategy, i guess.
You could go with the QuickTime Streaming Server. Free server. Free clients. Sounds like a pretty good deal, so long as you're willing to cut all those pesty non-windows and non-macintosh boxes out of your viewership. But don't worry, they're only like 7 or 8% of the market, so it won't matter that much.
Oops! Did I say that?
Why hasn't Real (or WMP) even been reverse engineered? Is it really all that secure or is it just that the guru-level hackers aren't interested in "streaming media"?
If the second, look for sm to go the way of "push"...
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
are the file associations your biggest gripe?
Do you even use the file associations under linux? there is a way, but I haven't run into anyone who uses it yet, just because the amount of work it saves is (IMHO) miniscule.
Why not install it and see? I'm getting RM files to play for the first time (older versions never liked my system). It really is an easy installation.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
I'd sadly have to agree with the comments that WMP is better than Real. Using them both under windows, accessing WMP/Real alternate streams of the same content, WMP is smoother and also allows me to jump to forward positions in the stream - if I try that with Real I just get audio and the video never really restarts.
However, since Linux is my platfom of choice at home, and I use Sun at work, I'm not happy with either solution. What I'd really prefer is a truly open solution that I can use anywhere, and that the open source community can tune to be the equal of any of the closed source commercail solutions.
Rather than reinventing the wheel, I'd suggest that the MBone tools should be used as the basis of an open source streaming video solution. I've seen a version of vic available with H.263 support which covers dial-up speeds, H.261 is available from a couple of places including openh323, which covers > 64K bps speeds such as cable/ADSL, and for even higher speeds MPEG2 is obviously the preferred choice, with the Berkley CODEC being available.
With all that beta-, unstable- or developer-versions of various programs around for Linux, one could think that there are almost no final releases.
Ok, we all know that with most of all programs even a beta-release is rock solid unless you do really obscure things with it.
Nevertheless I sure hope, there will be a final-version of the RealPlayer 7.
BTW: Why is it called "beta" and "final"? Shouldn't it be "beta" and "gamma"? =:-)
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
After Realmedia claimed to have fixed the "bugs" in the last version, I have seen a comment that RealPlayer quietly installs the dreaded Comet Cursor with it.
If you follow BUGTRAQ, you've already seen this, but for the benefit of those who don't, the following URL leads to RealNetwork's response to this exact issue: http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/archive. pike?list=1&date=2000-03-08&msg=3.0.5.32.200003091 91004.00832cc0@mail.real.com. For those not interested in following the link, the two essential bits of the RealNetwork response are:
No, I don't work for RealNetworks. Neither does my cat.
"Be Happy or Die." -- AoN
They stated that they were thinking of porting RealPlayer for Linux to PPC. Their reason for not having a port already is that they claimed that it would take a lot more than simply re-compiling their sources for a PPC.
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
"the controls don't work quite well (try double-sizing the window during playback .. still see video? I don't) and if you really want to nit-pick, try using the menu bar while your NumLock key is on"
I just tried both things that you mentioned, and had no problems... It double-sized and kept playing nice and smoothly, and I double-sized by using the menu bar while my NumLock key was on.
Adam
Thanks to RedHat, we now have closed-source applications using the development libc for Linux systems (glibc 2.0) instead of the stable branch. Considering that the stable branch is out, and seems quite good (I run it here under Slackware 7.0), why are they releasing it for glibc2.0? That's like putting out development patches for the 2.1.x kernels now that we're onto 2.2.x (and beyond).
Sigh. At least they're not using a kernel bug this time. I just wish they'd have an LGPLed wrapper for the core so we could fix things like linking to outdated/unstable glibcs.
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Hey! I want to use Mozilla with it!
Seriously, though, at least in the Red Hat RPM they distributed, they seem to have hard-coded in the assumption that you're using Netscape. In fact, when you install the RPM, it tries to start Netscape and connect to the Real site (even though one usually is root for installing the RPM). Not cool...
And there isn't apparently any place to indicate an alternate browser to be used...
Happy Premise #3: Even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won't.
Exactly.
I'd like to add that Real Player (in general) has to be the most unstable piece of software I've ever used and RP7 doesn't ease up. I can watch one clip under Win2K (reading off a disk) before I have to close and reopen it. Why? If I play more than two clips in a row RP7 resets my computer!
Or how about that annoying desynch if you watch realvideo for more than 2-3 minutes?
You wanna know how Microsoft's going to win the streaming media war? By creating a non-obtrusive player that sits quiet until media is presented. A player that won't spam the user with ads, make the system unstable or preload on startup.
Looks like real.com is just making it easier for them.
Jay
-- polish ccs mirror
Windows Media Player streams are simply much smoother than anything else I've seen, although I don't have much experience with Quicktime streaming to compare them.
Microsoft now has the best browser and the best streaming player. Unfortunately, I don't see Mozilla getting stable fast enough to really challenge IE, and there is certainly nothing to match Media Player on linux. :(
Can't you real networks guys get your act toghether and make a GUI in toolkit that doesn't look like shite.. Say GTK/QT. When Motif/netscape is no longer necesary because of Mozilla I hope I will never ever see one MOTIF app on my desktop again *ever*...
Now if someone updated the look on MOTIF to something more modern that would maybe make the use of MOTIF apps atleast somewhat tolerable..
What do you say lesstif guys?
huh?? I had previously a G2 (beta) player, and now I upgraded to the version 7 beta - the mailcap is perfect (with %u)
So far, excellent later. Nice to see that the installation recognizes KDE and added the player to it (in the personal menu)
Hetz (Heunique)
I'm the maintainer of the realplayer installer
package in the contrib distribution of Debian. Just to forstall a flood of
email, I'm writing to let people know that this version will *not* be
supported by the installer until Real makes it available in some format
other than a self-extracting program that must be run as root under
X and requires user interaction to install. That's stupid, and I'm just not
gonna go there. Once a rpm or (god forbid!) a tarball is available, the
realplayer installer in unstable will be updated to use it.
In the meantime, Debian folks who really need it can install it by hand.
--
see shy jo
Sorry, but take a look at this:
http://www.fsf.org/software/libc/libc.html
Glibc 2.0 was supposed to be a stable release; most everything added afterwards is either to fix bugs or to become more standards-compliant. RedHat isn't to blame anyway:
And, it uses 2.1 anyway (welcome to the wonderful world of SHARED LIBRARIES)The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
The installer (and later on, RealPlayer) seems to want to bind itself to every file extension the developers could think of at the moment of release. Then, it loads a memory-hogging piece of itself to load every time you start the OS, which newbies don't know how to get rid of (or probably don't even notice). It attempts to bombard you with ads. To download the free version on the Realmedia site, you have to go through a maze of pages asking you to pay for the player. Not to mention all the privacy issues. After Realmedia claimed to have fixed the "bugs" in the last version, I have seen a comment that RealPlayer quietly installs the dreaded Comet Cursor with it.
If the Linux version is anything like the Windows version, I don't see why everyone is so happy about this...
--
My boss decides that he wants me to add streaming to our site. Our web server runs NT (Hey! Don't look at me! I didn't install it!). Currently, I have two choices. Realmedia, whose server costs (lots?) of money, whose player I hate, who laughs at my privacy. Windows Media, whose server is free, whose player isn't so bad, who also laughs at my privacy.
If anyone can think of another choice, please let me know. I'll be very happy.
--
On all the forums and discussions on streaming media there seems to be a real (no pun intended) holy war going on between Real Server and Windows media services.
Real may be available for more platforms than WMP which is often given as a reason for providing content in that format. But Windows media services is free and that's a big problem for everyone who doesn't have Windows or Mac.
But - open source has an ace in this game - Icecast isn't the best technology - it's downright low tech - butif you're streaming audio then using icecast you can serve live content to WMP *and* Real player users as well as Xmms, winamp and all those other mp3 players.
And it's free (icecast is, shoutcast costs 300$).
So - remind all those people running windows media stations that ther is a 'better' solution out there. Better in that it offers a greater potential audience than either server.
Now... If only RP7 would download faster I wouldn't be saying things like this during the download...
You can already save your Real Audio with Streambox Ripper so I suppose you can say it has already been 'rev-enged' :)
Except Streambox Ripper doesn't know much about the Real Audio protocol. It just hitches a ride using the DLLs that the Real's player uses.
HTH,
--Matthew
My GNU/Linux box is a PowerPC (ppc), and it runs Linux as well as glibc2.1, but why do I think `Package Foo for Linux' won't run over here?
It may be quite a while until the ignorant lot get this, but we could do with a bit more enlightened view from /.
Jan
--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org
You can already save your Real Audio with Streambox Ripper so I suppose you can say it has already been 'rev-enged' :)
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
I also have the two media players installed on a WinNT box. I really don't like all the flashy extra garbage that RealPlayer has put in to their application, and honestly I think that is making their player less appealing to me. You can turn it all off, but I still don't like the fact that I've got 5MB (or whatever) of useless binary on my drive for crap I'll never use (yet, I keep getting informed to upgrade to the latest version so I can get my news ticker! ooh!).
Beta or not, I hope the media software for the UNIX world improves. That's my rant, and I'm sticking to it!
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Folks,
.RA or .RAM Real files is not in the good idea department.
.ASX files. Also, by default .ASX files sound FAR better than .RA files on V.90 analog modem connections.
.ASX file format than the Real .RA or .RAM format. Because of this, it will end up being quite a bit easier for someone to write a Linux client program that can stream .ASX files, and even possibly create .ASX files in a Linux-based streaming media server.
.ASX file format specifications fully available, because this could put a kibosh on Real Networks.
I think streaming
Having played around with RealPlayer 7.0 beta for Windows 98, that program has way too many things running in the background in addition to streaming Real files. No thanks!
Say what you want about Microsoft, but at least they got it right with Windows Media Player 6.4: it doesn't have things like channel selectors or advertisements running in the background streaming
In fact, it's actually far easier to get programming information on the
If I were Microsoft right now, I'd make the
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
it's pretty good! installation was nice (using the non RPM version), and it went just fine, except for the fact that I wasn't installing as root so it couldn't add the helper files in /usr/local/bin that it wanted to. But that's ok, I'll fix it later.
:-).
I Can watch RM files now!!! The earlier versions never worked for me at all. This one is very nice in comparison
To the guy worried about the file bindings, no, it doesn't screw anything up. I doubt it knows about the few file binding options you have under Linux. It seems to be very well behaved.
Thanks, Real! It's finally usable and I for one really appreciate it!
On another note, does anyone know what video codecs are included? Do we get the annoying Microsoft ones, too?
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
In a press conference held today by Real Inc., Vice President of Marketing Seymour Butts stated "Only 10 months after our Real Player G2 Alpha for Linux was released we unveil Real Player 7 Beta for Linux!"
"We have made great strides to bring our newest stats grab, er, player to Linux, and we hope to be well received in the Linux community."
When asked why no stable player has been released for Linux since version 5, Mr. Butts resolves "Actually the beta is the final version, we just can't say that or else we'd have to support it."
"Our next version of the Linux Real Player will be 8 Gamma, followed by 9 Delta, 10 Echo and continuing on like that. It's a pretty ingenious way to get out of supporting a product, don't you think? Our lawyers thought it up."
-- iCEBaLM
I downloaded the player this morning, and installed it---it's quite sweet. Works great with ESD, sounds very good. I'm quite pleased with it.
But there's an odd trend I've noticed... When I went to listen to the live stream of my NPR station with my spiffy new player, it couldn't play it because it was for Windows Media Player only. Doh! I wrote them to tell them that this was pretty frustrating (especially since I'm pretty sure they also used to webcast for Real player).
But the fact is, this is becoming more and more common, I think. Sites are going to WMP-only based content. Is Microsoft trying to undercut their competition again by bundling software with the OS? (And is the DoJ paying attention?)
Happy Premise #3: Even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won't.
There is shoutcast and icecast. (Try www.*.com for each or do a search.)
We're using icecast on one of our Linux boxes at WMU to serve up the campus radio station (http://www.widr.org). It's streaming mp3 so you can use almost any client (xmms, mpg123, real, winamp, etc) to listen.