RealNetworks Releases Helix Source

teeheehee writes "According to this DigitalMass article, RealNetworks yesterday released source code for their audio and video players, with server-side and encoding software coming maybe in December. The code isn't complete, it's missing things like burning-to-cd routines; and they're getting flak from Microsoft calling it a ploy. Regardless, anytime a big company releases their source only good can come of it (for the public.)" Our story a few days ago had more information on the licensing, and gathered a couple of interesting posts from one user.

Comments

Of course it's a ploy...

[NineNine]

It's called marketing. Real Networks doesn't need any help coding. I'm sure that they don't want any. They're just doing it as a marketing ploy to get more uber geeks releasing media in their format, and using their products. They're a company. They want to make a profit. They're not going to do something "for the good of the community" just for the hell of it. It's marketing, that's all. Anyone who thinks that they're being altruistic is very naive.

Re:Of course it's a ploy...

[eric6]

regardless of their intentions, isn't this a beneficial result? We get free, clean media players, they get a bigger market share. Sure it's for their benefit, but ours too. "Not being altruistic" isn't necessarily a reason to be against this. I'd be far more suspicious of a move that had nothing in it for the mover.

Re:Of course it's a ploy...

[SirSlud]

> They're a company. They want to make a profit.

I'm not sure how to say this in non flame bait terms, so I will follow Ed the Sock's advice: "If you dont have anything nice to say, say it often."

So, I'm going to punch the next person who says what you said. Everybody knows companies must make a profit. Nobody doesn't know.

I am so sick of posters quickly pointing out that company A isn't making move B because they've turned into gum-drop fairies who suddendly transcend the need to make money. Of course they don't! Who thinks they do?! Companies are meant to serve a market and can only exist in the absense of selflessness. While you can definately make a case that individual companies may sacrifice time to time in the interest of the overall health of the market, companies *must* and *do* place self interest (survival of the company) above the health of the system (the market).

Now humans, we can be selfless, because we have different goals other that simply surviving as individuals. Our desire to see others succeed where we may not, for example, may cause a human to sacrifice in order to contibute to another human or an overall social order. You can find humans who would _happily_ die if they could sufficiently contibute to an external social order they are ideologically aligned with (think of everything from organ donations to suicide bombers.)

If you were to ask me, the existance of apparent altruism shows how humans (at least some, I contend most) ultimately seek to live lives with a minimal amount of social conflict. We will 'pay it forward' and risk acting in selfless manners even if we cannot be garaunteed that our actions will result in the desired consequence (ie, less social conflict.) Much how people are willing to spend 2 dollars a day for lottery tickets despite no garauntee of winning. The perceived result of acting selflessly is sufficiently wanted enough to motivate us to engage in said behaviour even in the face of evidence that might suggest we may never experience it; just like the lottery.

But the bottom line is, who cares if they're being altruistic or not .. is this good for us or bad? Any discussion on whether Real Networks is being selfless or not is moot and a waste of time.

Please pass this message on to other folks. These kinds of parent posts get people all worked up, but for no reason at all!

Re:Of course it's a ploy...

[digidave]

And how often is a web developer/master responsible for choosing media formats? I'd guess more often than not they are in small companies. I know I am and I'm not even in a small company. My boss came to me a couple of months ago with a proposal he got to stream our video. The format was Windows media, but I had to say that it was ok because there are no appropriate and available alternatives.

This changes that and you can bet that if this takes off at all I'll be pushing for it next year. With a couple of thousand streams per day this is important for us, and I love the idea of embracing a technology that everyone can use.

Most of the Codecs are Still Binary!

[PhoenixK7]

Most of the codecs are still binary, the ones that there's actually source included for are ones that we've already had for a while. All we've gotten is another media player shell..

https://www.helixcommunity.org/2002/intro/client

c'mon only MP3 and H.263? weak!

The source code is not a panacea

[Adam Rightmann]

especially for something as real time intensive as multimedia software. You need to be a proficient, educated coder and write highly optimal code if you want to make improvements to Real Player, we've all seen the jaggies, blur, blocks and skipped audio resulting from poorly written multimedia code.

So, yes, this is somewhat significant, but if you think your garden variety basement Linux hacker can go from Recipe Blaster 2000 to writing good codecs, well, I need only remind you the chaos that resulted when Luther decided to publish source code.

Re:How open is this source?

[be-fan]

It wouldn't have to be a hax0r. The thing is open source, so any code monkey could do it. What most likely happened was that the CD rom burning code was licensed from some other company, and had to be ripped out for the open source release.

Re:How open is this source?

[The Evil Couch]

probably little time at all, considering how many freeware CD burning programs there are.

going open source can only help them out. hell, just a few minutes ago, I was banging my head into the wall trying to record a real video stream. with new programs and UIs for manipulating real formats, people may actually use real video.

maybe they'll also quit hiding the free version of their player on their website

promising step...

[mistermoonlight]

RealPlayer for Linux has been acceptable, haven't tried RealOne for Linux, but this could be so much better.

Get it to play QuickTime without installing the QuickTime player and I'm set (I know, it's a dream, and Apple should port anyway)

What a coup it would be for helix to have WMA compatibility. I'm just superimposing ffmpeg's WMA efforts over helix, though.

possibilities, possibilities...

Re:The Real Player Secret Handshake

[pete-classic]

Are you fucking serious?

I was trying to add RTSP/RTP support to wget, but it turns out that Real uses a "secret handshake" to validate clients before xmiting data.

Is this at all unclear that I am having problems with a Real extension to the protocol?

To answer your question, I have. One of those pages indicates that Real is within the bounds of the protocol (RTSP) to give a challenge and refuse to stream the data if it doesn't get the "right" response.

I guess I am not clear if you are trolling me, or if /. has degenerated to the point that when someone asks about trying to implement a protocol, links to the relevant RFCs is actually considered insightful.

I'm not sure which would be worse . . .

-Peter

Re:And all of you running PPC or Alpha Linux

[runderwo]

(assuming that this is what it looks like -- an open sourcing of the client codecs).

Only the client is being open sources. The codecs are retained as binary object code.

This is very good

[Sivar]

Now we can remove the skads of useless, annoying crap that the player comes with (not trying to troll, but the official RealPlayer is an incredibly annoying application) and cut it down the core--the excellent video and audio technologies that they have developed.
Wrap it up in a package 500K and have a nice, useful tool.

Actually, I see an alternative

[Dark Paladin]

Real doesn't have to use GNU - and while I prefer GNU in most cases, they can do a simple "business vs personal" licensing system. People who want access to the client - go ahead, knock yourself out, code away. If you want access to the stuff that *makes* the RealPlayer files, the code might be out there - but if you're a business, be prepared to pay.

Now, I'm a business developing stuff. Do I go Quicktime/MS Media, where I can't see the code and it costs $$$, or go Real where I can see the code, and it's being improved (hopefully, granted) by all the Open Source fans out there who want to give it more powers.

Or Real can simply give away the code, and charge service for maintenance, adding new features, extra special versions for corporations, etc, etc, etc. There are companies now (Snort, Red Hat, etc) that use Open Source in that way and seem to be doing financially well.

Open Source doesn't have to mean suicide - if you're smart and wise about it.

Its free, quit whinning.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why all this ragging on RealPlayer? They offer a free linux client that works great. Of course the windows client is going to have stuff to go around, most free windows programs do. Just be glad that it doesn't make you install Gator, or any other nasty spyware. If you go to custom install you can prevent ANY of the icons from being placed on your desktop. You can choose not to use any of the other garbage (like the download manager).
You guys are so busy complaining about things on RealPlayer that can be changed in less than 2 minutes, yet you've probably spent countless hours getting a website _just_ right. Oh and the horrible, horrible system tray icon? Preferences -> System Tray Icon -> turn off. Nag screens? check the "please don't send me Special Offers and stuff". Was that so horrible?
I for one like RealOne Player. It pretty much plays anything under the sun. Just because you have to spend a couple minutes to set it up the way you want it to act doesn't mean its trash. Plus its prettier than WMP. (oo, there goes all my credibility right there)

One Flame deseres another

[Ted_Green]

He allready did look once.
It's not as if he's asking you to do the work for him.

When somone asks "does anybody know if" it doesn't always mean they're too lazy to do the research themselves, and in this case I'd say it's a sign of intelligence. It's similar to asking "has anyone found the needle in the haystack." before going and looking for it yourself.

It's not about the Mediaplayer

[sh0rtie]

Its about their website and services that it brings to their "partners"

Their media player was working fine on version 6 and with the advent of their "realone" it is merely now a device to get you to their website and subscribe to their services, nothing more nothing less, a very targeted webbrowser if you will, on Windows it actually uses the IE activeX control as a core browser part of the player (including alert dialogs) which is probably why we havent seen a linux version (thank goodness).

The battle of the players was won long ago, its now about "web services" , Microsoft took a leaf out of Real ones's book and with Windows Media Player 9 they are now no different,

I have 8 buttons on the front panel of WMP9, 3 of those directly lead to windowsmedia.com and what they and their "partners" offer, plugins ? sure i gotta pay for those (unlike winamp) track identification ? via cddb ? nope MS want to do that so they can match me (with their unique player id (selected on by default of course)) with my music tastes and help their partners sell to me (via the msn network), of course RealPlayer has a unique ID option and 70% of the buttons on RealOne lead to Reals website.

I installed RealOne free player and i had a hell of a time losing all the spyware crap and firewalling their encrypted communications to the Real mothership and iam a "power user" imagine the millions of poor users who have no idea whats going on behind the scenes with their imho "private" data, after firewalling Real off the player became severly crippled and most of the functions wouldnt work without me being pestered to "upgrade" (translation: pay money to see their partners adverts) upon every boot Real would try to contact the mothership with encrypted data, spyware in the truest sense of the word

This is why the actual protocol source isnt released its the only thing that forces people to download their player to see streams, sure give away the player shell and server app source for free and when the user hits the stream with their old Real player 6 they are forced to get a modern player which will be RealOne, job done .

give them the glass pipe for free but the rocks of crack you gotta pay for.

It hasnt been about the technicalities of producing a better more efficient media player that can actually help the user for a couple of years now, its about how Real/Microsoft and their "partners" can increase their ROI and make us much profit out of each customer/punter/mug any way they can.

Re:wimp

[donutello]

If you google for it, you'll find that WiMP has had a bit of good spyware in it.

Yes, I have read the allegations. And they can all be dismissed as rampant paranoia. I have no problem with a feature which can be disabled which sends a reference to what you are playing so you can download information about it. I have a really hard time believing that it was put in there so your music habits could be sold for 1c/person. Now, a company like Real on the other hand...

so much politics/complaining

[iamkrinkle]

This post isn't meant as insult or hostile, so don't take it that way. I've been reading post after post saying how horrible this is going to be, how horrible real has been, blah blah. I don't think i saw one post that had the line "after trying the player...". I mean, yeah, realplayer sucked, but this is somehting new, why judge it so harshly before you've even tried it. Right now i'm d/l and compiling it, maybe you guys should do that too before posting.

just my $.02

--Andrew

the codecs and protocols are all that matters

[g4dget]

The only things that matter are the codec specifications, with the streaming protocols a distant second. And those only matter because there is a lot of RealAudio and RealVideo out there on the web, not because there aren't good open source alternatives already.

And, guess what, the codecs for Real's audio and video formats are just what they aren't releasing in source form.

All we are getting with Helix DNA is a lot of useless infrastructure code--no meat. Thanks, but no thanks. This is a useless marketing ploy.