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RealNetworks Sues Microsoft Over Antitrust Issues
jamacdon writes "Yahoo! has an article about RealNetworks Inc. filing an antitrust suit against Microsoft, claiming that MS has violated antitrust laws. This claim appears to revolve around how PC makers are restricted from including competing media players. Very similiar to the Internet Explorer issue, but different content. Will the results be the same?"
Not exactly, if you go to Add and Remove Windows Components, you can remove WMP. After the Anti-trust suit, microsoft also does not insist that no other media be installed by OEM. Plus Real just sucks....
(Emphasis mine.) They were still very much alive when the lawsuit was started, however. Netscape was synonymous with the web for quite awhile there. It's funny how you say "netscape" now and people look at you like "what's that?"
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I have to kill it and remove it out of the registry to from stop it from starting up whenever I login.
No you don't.
Your credit card information wants to be free.
I think that the real reason Real Player died out is more or less due to a lower quality program
That's for certain. I have Winamp, Musicmatch and iTunes on my PC, but I still refuse to load Real, even though BBC and other sites only offer video in Real format. Seems to me it will be hard to make a case for anti-trust when so many sites are exclusive to Real. Hmmm... Maybe Real is the monopolist! Seems ridiculous to accuse M$ of anti-trust issues when Dell puts Musicmatch on every consumer PC and Winamp and iTunes can be had with a few mouse clicks.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
OTH, I do not even bother with WMP anymore. Nine times of ten there is a message about a needed update, a needed verification, or some website that must be consulted. WMP is wonderful at delivering eyeballs to advertisers to or 'protecting' digital content. As far as efficiently delivering good enough content to consumers, it fails totally.
And I understand you may be talking about image quality or sound quality, but that is why I have quicktime.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Real, at least for their server software is (or was...) almost entirely a Linux shop. Real helped Linux make inroads into the server market at a LOT of companies. I'm still under NDA so I'm only mentioning two of the ones I could find press releases for quickly, but this includes companies with great big satelite networks (PanAmSat for one), a couple of great big phone companies (like Deutshce Telecom)...
Real also helped a lot in the fight to get Linux drivers for a whole bunch of video capture cards...
...doesn't excuse the shit they pulled, but...
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
I disagree...
Have any of you used RealPlayer lately? While WMP 9 has been getting more and more functional in terms of quality and features (surround-sound media formats, HD-quality video, built-in ripping and encoding, a usable Media Library), RealPlayer has become progressively bloated, ad-ridden, and full of spy-ware. The fact that I have to search through the registry to disable the stupid "Real Message Center" background app is infuriating to me, and is the major reason why I avoid it and tell others to do the same.
First of all, why must the two be mutually exclusive? I have both of them installed on my PC quite happily. When I double-click on a RealMedia file, the Windows Shell launches RealPlayer. When I double-click on a WindowsMedia file, the shell launches WMP 9. How is this "lock-out"?
Second of all, how can there really be "lock-out" when there is so much competition in the Media Player market? Aside from iTunes for Windows, there is also Winamp 2/3/5, QuickTime, Sonique, Media Player Classic, and several other lesser-known ones. They all work great on Windows, and co-exist just fine with Media Player.
The only argument I see here is Real whining that Microsoft should have to distribute RealPlayer for them. In other words, Media Player has an unfair advantage because it ships with Windows. Well, duh. But now the government should protect RealPlayer because it is not installed with Windows?
Here's a suggestion for Real: Make a better player, and you'll gain market share the old-fashioned way. Through customers who WANT to use your software, not just because it's there.
The complaint isn't that MS won't package RealCrap on their install disc. The complaint is that supposedly MS is, by predatory and restrictive licencing, essentially forbidding manufacturers from packaging competitors' media players.
Otherwise, you're right, this would be absurd. If the actual accusation were in fact the case, this would be essentially a smaller "browser war," but it clearly is not, as many Dell customers on Slashdot have attested.
To reign is to serve.
IE for Mac is still being developed. However, the only way to get it is via MSN. The MSN suite will not run on your Mac unless you pay the subscription. And, funnily enough, Microsoft has a tariff for those who already have Internet connections and just need access to the MSN software (and those parts of MSN behind MSN's walled garden that nobody really knows about anyway.)
So IE for Mac costs about $120/year. Food for thought...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Strange, how times can change. And yet, if you asked me my general opinion of AOL, I'd still say they suck - But I suppose I have to thank them for sponsoring two pretty nice programs.
I was working for a small fragment of Turner Broadcasting (owned by Time Warner) when the AOLTW merger happened. And I have to say from that experience, and from what else I've seen of AOL, they're not really evil. Chaotic Neutral, maybe.
Here's the thing... their main product sucks. It's dumped tons of people onto the internet that maybe we'd rather not have there. They've done their best to be the biggest, but mostly by littering our mailboxes, magazines, point-of-purchase displays, and what-have-you with coasters-I-mean-CDs.... which costs them money as much as it's a hassle for us.
They treat their employees fairly well, and have a basically honest and moral business philosophy. Their dealings with Time Warner, which were overly optimistic and misguided on both sides, were still up-front and didn't give me any ooky feeling. When we were directed to install AOL on every single computer in our office (bad, bad idea, and one they finally gave up on), their techs commiserated with ours over the difficulties of installing AOL in a network environment (the 6.0 install would hang if there was a network card installed. Always. Unless you installed 5.0 first.)
They're sort of like Electronic Arts... nice company to work for (in some ways), but I wouldn't want to do business with them. Though with AOL it seems to be general ineptitude balanced by blind luck, rather than anything malicious.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
[mods shouldn't mod your stupid sig up along with you insightful comment.]
WMP on Windows is hellishly fast. You're given a choice between the new interface(WMP9, fluffy) and the old one(WMP6, minimalist) on XP, and they're both equivalent in functionality due to the fact that they're actually just frontends for DirectShow. If you install a decent codec pack(I use Tsunami, but Nimo also seems to be popular), you'll never see another one of those update messages again. In my experience, ninety-nine out of a hundred problems people have with WMP are due to corrupt files and codec issues, not the player itself.
Contrast this with Real: annoying to install(in one window, options that are on by default are listed BELOW disabled options, hiding them from view; no install-time option to disable the system tray icon), slower, more crash-prone...
There's no reason to use Real over WMP on a Windows platform except to view Real content. Real content sucks anyway compared to DivX, XVid, QT, or MPG, but fortunately it has been on the decline for a long time. We can only hope that it disappears completely.
The above is less true for QT, but since WMP is at least as good(I like it better -- less fluff), there's no reason to use it either except to play QT content. If it weren't for Real/QT[1] codec issues I could ditch both of their players completely. Mplayer on Linux supports all of them out of the box, thanks to whoever wrote the ebuild.
Visit the
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
That's why they're working on this:
https://www.helixcommunity.org/