RealOne Player for Mac OS X

JakiChan writes "Finally Mac OS X users can view stunning RealAudio and RealVideo streams. OmniWeb doesn't seem to like it, but IE and Moz appear to play embedded streams just fine." Be careful, it's a beta.

Comments

Stunning?

[Alan Partridge]

this must be some new usage of the word that I was not previously aware of.

"Stunning?"

[1010011010]

Oh, please. Real is not "stunning," and their software is annoying.

Re:"Stunning?"

[Dark Paladin]

I completely agree.

I don't use real. Ever. I'm trying to remember the last time I had to use it - DivX:)/Mpeg4 is just as small, and looks much better. Most movie trailers are done as Quicktime. I think the last time I *had* to use the Real format was to view the Kingdom Hearts trailer (stupid Squaresoft).

Real is just too annoying, between the "if you don't click the 50 billion options you'll be bugged every time you blink - oh, and we'll forget them later and take control of every friggin' media type on your computer! Thanks!", and the crappy video quality.

RealCrap

[billcopc]

Before you mod me down as flamebait, just remember the last time you used Real. Didn't it just suck goats ? RealMedia is a flaky closed format whose only strength is low cpu usage. They never released a proper codec, instead forcing their retarded annoying player down users' throats. Real's time has passed, today's video of choice is DivX or even just good old Mpeg-1.

And if you've even tried the RealOne player, it's the most intrusive player they've ever created. If anything, this is BAD news.

Re:RealCrap

[foobar104]

Yes I agree Real is not a very good codec and closed. But the same thing could be said about quicktime before Version 6 and the mp4 codec.

Except for the part about it being not very good. The Sorensen codecs (which is what everybody is really talking about when they complaing about QuickTime being proprietary) are the best low-bit-rate codecs out there, hands down. Proprietary isn't automatically bad.

Stuff that's proprietary but good is okay (Sorensen). Stuff that's open but not as good can sometimes be okay, too (MPEG-4). Stuff that's open and sucks... sucks (DiVX). And stuff that's proprietary and sucks also sucks (Real).

I'd draw a little ASCII-art graph, but I'm lazy.

Fire the Development Team

[Dave9876]

OSX has been out for what? close to 2 years? It has taken that long for Real to release a version of their player that doesn't require us to load it in classic, and it's still only Beta quality (or probably closer to pre-alpha quality, but, then again, they never get any better than that). I'm guessing it'll blow donkey balls just as much as previous versions.

Bah, what a load of shit. Now if only half of my Futurama collection (note: I didn't encode it) wasn't in realvideo format, or if there was some easy way to convert them to a *SANE* format (read. doesn't require a fucked up media player full of spyware and advertising).

Now, if they had a decent dev team, it might have been out there a just after OSX was released, and it might have become stable (dreaming), and it might have evolved into a DECENT format (impossible).

One less reason to use Classic

[superflippy]

I know that Real video is terrible quality, and their pop-up ads are annoying, but I personally am thrilled by this announcement. You see, I am a Survivor junkie, and all the video from the show on the CBS web site is in Real format. Next season, I can watch clips of Bickering Idiots in Paradise without firing up IE for Classic, and that makes me and my Finder happy. Hey, at least it's not Windows Media Player.

Re:rm still alive?

[1g$man]

Unfortunately, Real has a lot of big content deals--that's what keeps them going. Major League Baseball for one.

Re:Stunning RealVideo?

[White Roses]

Well, think "stunning" as in "set phasers on stun." That's probably more like it. You'll be shocked, then paralytic. With rage.

disspelling a few myths

[zephc]

about this player

downsides:
The RM format continues to blow

upsides:
- full screen playback is smooth
- skipping around the file (to different times) is perfectly smooth, snapping there instantly, rather than trying to rebuffer the whole damn file
- no ads (at least in the beta)
- doesn't try to hijack all your file formats... i actually had to tell Finder to use .RM as a RealOne file extension!
- no other crap all over the place, its JUST the RealOne player

Re:disspelling a few myths

[zephc]

oh, and while its Beta, i haven't had any crashes or other such things one associates with 'Beta'... it is a pretty quick and snappy app. Please TRY things before you just start go bashing them.

Yes, Real took WAY too long to release this, but hey, its out now, do download it and try it out!