Slashdot Mirror
Real Launches New Player, Music Store
kforeman writes "You may have heard Real's
many announcements today, including the release of RealPlayer 10
with vastly improved codecs, as well as our new Music Store. As a
result of the player engine being developed in the Helix
community, we're able to offer the benefits of the new RealAudio
and RealVideo in
in the Helix Player for Linux. We read Slashdot here at Real, especially when the
subject of our company or technology comes up, so we know some of you
may not have liked recent versions of our player. This release
represents a much friendlier direction for us; more options that were
'opt-out' are now 'opt-in'. In developing RealVideo 10,
our codec team has been working closely with the Doom9 community, and
has been posting
updates to that forum (look for references to RV9-EHQ). The tests
that have been performed by that community show RealVideo doing
quite well against the competition." There's a CNET News article discussing the announcements, including the jukebox's ability to play "secure downloads from the iTunes store", for those looking for another point of view.
But all the page said was "Buffering..."
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
my problem isnt in the "opt-out" issues in your player. I've gotten used to having to opt-out of just about everything. My problem is with its chronic takeover of my media, inherent bloat and general slowness, and its over-affinity for my ram. Though I cant say that many other windows-based media players are better.
.
I haven't installed the realplayer on any of my computers lately, is it still bloated crap that installes zillions of files all over the place on my mac? You guys ever seen those mac applications where you drag a single file to the app dir and that completes the install? No? Didn't think so. I like the iTunes music store, thanks.
Put any software that can be labelled as spyware in your product, become an instant pariah. I'm already VERY wary of any Real-player-related product.
Ryan Fenton
Not only does RealPlayer fail horribly as a media player, but RealNetworks fails as a company (and so will their so-called music store). Their player has always sucked (people only use .rm and .ram or whatever the hell it is to piss people off) and always will. Whenever I want to watch something and it's in .rm format, I just ignore it. Their software is like AOL, once you install it (yes, I actually installed AOL trying to get free Internet then realized you needed a credit card anyways... good ol' Windows 3.11 days), there is no hope on Gods green earth you're going to remove it.
Sorry. Quicktime offers better quality. WMP just works better. Real needs to serious innovations to get back in the race. They still completly throw interface standards out the window. Even iTunes, with all its quirks, still sort of maintains standards.
Implicit Evaluation with PHP
Does anyone know if they provide some sort of access to the listening stats ala iTunes xml files? It would be nice to have so third parties could tie into the app.
Actually, this comes with Winamp5... it's called ShoutcastTV or something. Free streaming Porn TV!
I am forced to install Real Player (Free version) on our workstations since some of the resources our lawyers access requires it.
I do *NOT* like this situation. Real has caused us more headaches than any other app we use.
What, besides the "options" being opt-in, would make me *want* to install RealPlayer for our users?
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Real's actions seem to be mirroring Netscape's very closely. FIrst in order to compete with Microsoft, the go open source. Next they sue Microsoft for antitrust violations. Now they are in a fighting for survival in a market dominated by others. Hope fully this will turn out better for them.
Does anyone know if they updated the Mac version, and if so, does it play iTunes Store files there?
that's a long way from saying "we are no longer evil at all." I don't want to be the first to find out how they screw us now.....
Just a note, the software uses iTunes/Quicktime to play the protected AAC files from iTMS. VLC can play protected AAC files without any additional software. Would be nice if Real could do the same.
-----
What happened to the Censorware Project?
Then I hope you read this. RealOne was one of the most offensive pieces of software I've ever installed on my system. I eventually managed to get rid of it and put on an older player, but some Real content just doesn't play without the new player. As a result, I simply avoid content for Real Player. Haven't really missed it. I rather expect that many Slashdot readers feel as I do.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I'll just stick to RealAlternative, thanks.
will they release RealPorn? if they're so interested in giving us what we want, give us the RealPorn!
Try this instead?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Bah, who cares about Real? Isn't everyone only interested in the new music store and hardware players Microsoft will announce at CES? ;)
I hate people like you... you sick fuck.
According to the free basic player (Windows and Linux), v10 player is still in beta.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The site www.realnetworks.com is running Thisisarealoperatingsystemfromthefreeworld1.2alpha 12 on Linux.
Real Player is probably the worst of all media players. I'd rather use winamp to play media. I hate how it hangs out in the system tray. I hate the questions it asks when it pops up. It's crap.. It really is. Apple already has 70% of the online music market. Face it REAL, you REALLY lost.
I was actually thinking about Real Networks this morning, as I read the article about TIVO suing Echo Star (makers of the fine DVR in my living room) concerning TIVO's supposed patent on "pausing and rewinding TV" while the live data continues to stream to disk.
Now, at the basic level, live TV is simply a video stream delivered over a network.
RealVideo streams are also, at a basic level, video streams delivered over a network. And I know that I have been able to pause and rewind video streams on my computer while the stream continues to buffer at the end of the file for quite some time.
So does Real Networks' video streaming technologies predate TIVO's? Do you think TIVO will go after you guys next?
Just curious.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Seriously. Make your player not look like a pile of dog shit that was in the microwave for 10 minutes too long. When I install your software, I want to install that: your software. NOT a free trial of AOL, and furthermore, your player should speak only when spoken to (i.e. not get greedy and put itself in the menu bar and load on startup) and really, I only need one shortcut to it on my computer, not one on the desktop, one in the menu bar, one in the start button...etc.
Thanks but no thanks. I'll stick to iTunes. You say you guys at Real read Slashdot? Put your money where your mouth is.
Buffering... Buffering... Buffering...
Berrik
Current karma: Terrible (due to mods without a sense of humor)
As a proud Treo 600 owner, the press release that got my attention was this one that describes the availability of Real tunes on Treo. This could be really cool if I can actually access the Real store from my Treo 600. Then I could be anywhere in the country, buy a song, download it and listen to it on the spot. Could come in real handy on road trips.
Anyone know if this will be the case, or will it just support playback on the Treo after you buy them on your PC?
We, we, we? Who are you? Who compromises the "we"??
BTW, I was unable to see the helix website because my browser said the security certificate did not match the name of who it was granted to.
So how many more hidden things are "opt-in". If you hear us, then why hide spyware?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Wo wo wo wait a sec. Real releases a new player and a new codec. That works on linux, developed in the helix community. That might not suck. And it plays iTunes encrypted songs.
Will it do my laundry as well?
Is this new player going to annoy me with constant reminders to update (which I've been ignoring so far since every update is even worse and more bloated, and the update process takes over my file associations)?
When men used to be men
Since the online music store area is one which of course has yet to be explored commercially.
And even if some competing online music stores pop up, I'm sure Real will still be able to maintain the "competitive edge" by the strength of their media player software, which as we all know is so well-loved that people will often spend hours trying to figure out how to uninstall it.
-- Super Ugly Ultraman
I don't think the "sponge" can hold any more water. Real doesn't exactly have a positive consumer outlook with *anyone* and that is what is needed to survive. Perhaps they should concentrate and using their talent to develop a player people want to use (and pay for.. how do you comptete with WinAmp or iTunes which are free....) before worrying about this extra crap.
Wow. You must be really low on self-esteem by now then...
I am glad to see that the Windows real player is taking a more "player" like stance, not a big billboard that happens to include video. It has been putting off our adoption of realplayer. I'd suggest elimination of the "marketing blitz" on the player, as websites don't want viewers to have to view 50 popups and various registration just to play our content! It's bad enough to ask them to download a player, but to ask them to be subjected to that? People don't want to buy "Pro", they don't want viagra, they don't want more spam, they don't want to be forced to register the player... all they want to do is to be able to view our content! Although we hate windows media, it is installed on much more of our viewers than realplayer and generally just acts as a player... which is leaning us that way.
... their software does it's best to hijack your computer to suit THEIR ends, not yours. I'm sure it does its best to rape your computer for any information it can get. Marketroids marketroids marketroids. Fuckoff with your stupid corporate anti-consumer anti-privacy malware.
Why the fuck would anyone subject themselves to everything that their software does in excess of actually creating or viewing media?
A pox on every fucking idiot who encodes or has encoded media in real's format.
Music stores. What is that all about? Is it good or is it whack?
Hear hear. Real Networks had a shot in 98' to do it right and they opted for the "we will take over your operating system and destroy it" syndrone. The "creative geniuses" in their boardroom should be making lattes at Starbucks. Real Networks = Future playbook on how to make every conceivable wrong move under the sun. I root for almost anyone playing against Microsoft, but it would divine intervention for these guys to get crushed under the boot and extinguished in a puff of smoke.
Unless Real changes their tune, I'll be glad if they die in a flaming wreckage.
Your player will *never* be accepted under GNU/Linux until you open source your codecs and license your patents in an open source friendly way. What's wrong with releasing your codecs under the GPL and saying any GPL'd software can make use of the code any way it likes? All your competitors will avoid patented GPL code as if it's the flesh eating disease. But the GNU/Linux community will consider you da bomb! Don't just think about it. *DO* it!
I see a lot of people posting negative comments about the Real player and policies. I'm not much of a windows user, so I can't really judge. I also haven't thoroughly tried out the new Real release, so I can't tell you if they're doing what they say they're doing. On the other hand, I don't think anyone posting about how awful Real is has done so, either.
As far as I'm concerned, it's your actions now and the trust you can give me for your future actions that affect my opinion of you. If Real is really changing their ways, going for faster and more open codecs, and moving away from forcing me to sign my life away to install a media player, is that something we want to discourage?
The jury is still out on what the new player and registration scheme is like. But as far as I'm concerned, if Real can learn from their mistakes and bad PR to turn around and do the right thing, they should be proud of what they're doing, the editors of Slashdot should be proud of having made a positive difference, and we should be applauding them, not denigrating them.
So let's wait to see their new stripes before we go hunting them.
so java and real are distributing binaries compiled with gcc3 while still providing gcc2 backups, with mozilla on linux now defaulting to using gcc3 macromedia flash-player users with linux are starting to be left in the cold. so please, we need to wake up macromedia and ask them to at the very least distribute gcc3 compiled binaries of flash player 6, or considering they support darwin with player7, it cant be that hard for them to port it to linux
"We think the legal online distribution of movies is going to be a big business sooner than a lot of people think," said Real's senior vice president of marketing Dan Sheehan. "With today's bandwidth via broadband, that can be a reality."
Other things Real's senior vice president of marketing Dan Sheehan thinks are going to be HUGE in the coming years:
fresh drinking water in every home - "With today's underground pipe system, that can be a reality."
horseless carriage or "automobile" - "With today's improvements in steam or gasoline engines, that can be a reality."
the cross-country telegraph - "With today's amazing conductive wires, that can be a reality."
fire - "With today's spark-creating rocks, that can be a reality."
Mr. Sheehan also mentioned his business is ready for the upcoming advances in vacuum tube technology that will allow computers to fit inside a single room, and have enough magnetic core memory to install all Real Networks adware and .dll files without crashing.
When watching a trailer the last week I was forced to user RealPlayer9. I guess from Linux I don't see the illness of wanting to be the media player for every thing that is multimedia related. The quality was fine. The only reason I had RealPlayer was because many NPR shows and archives only come in RealAudio. If RealPlayer9 for Linux is any indication of quality the new player will be nice too. As long as I don't have to pay I don't care. Its just like having a QuickTime player around when I have to watch other things.
Obviously the folks at Real Networks are aware of and *CARE* about the opinion of slashdot readers. This is a very good sign, especially since a lot of people here seem to hate Real with a passion.
Maybe it's only a matter of time until Microsoft/etc can't ignore us anymore.
I tried it and its been great!
The sooner the real media format disappears the better. We hates it forever.
"Real will always suck."
That's modded insightful? It's about as insightful as the GNAA.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Dear Real Networks,
I'd really love to use your bloated, ugly player. Unfortunately I don't support spammers. Especially ones that distribute malware that not only takes over a user's media file associations without their consent but constantly phones home and nags them about upgrading.
No, I think I'll stick with Real Alternative should I ever need to play a file that some misguided fool has encoded using your POS codec.
...give us the RealPorn!
Maybe they could use the RealDoll.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
How is this insightful? Is no company able to ever improve? People keep bringing up the fact that IBM used to be the Enemy yet is now one of the biggest friends to the open source community, but Real has no possible way they can improve?
On the other hand, they said they're reading Slashdot. If comments like the parent are what they've been seeing, maybe they just decided to ignore public opinion, since so much of it seems to be pointless criticism.
Um, have you looked at all the crap iTunes puts to load at startup?
Nasty stinky software. Keep it away from us!
It really is a link to wil weaton's website. Please give ChrisN79's karma a good what for.
Since you're sucking resources out of the community to code your products, have you ever thought of not locking us out of the music service you run?
I was going to take another look at your license agreement to see if it was any less preposterous than the previous one, which basically wanted admin privileges on user's machines so it could shoehorn in all kinds of DRM crap and all the usual garbage. After supplying the usual fake information in order to access the download (following links from the "version 10" announcement on the front page), what came down for OSX was labeled version 9, beta.
You should put the license agreement somewhere obvious on the site so people can inspect it before downloading. And maybe don't have links to version 10 until version 10 is really there?
Glad you're reading slashdot. I'd take careful notes on the comments in here to learn why most slashdotters can't abide Real, and make whatever changes you can make.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Fuck your improved codecs and fuck your contribution to open source. You get no sympathy from me when the link to download the player is called "upsell_link."
BUFFERING.. BUFFERING.. BUFFERING..
(anti retarded all caps filter defeating text)
Everybody seems to be whining about what a bloaded piece of crap the current RealPlayer is, how it eats system resources, changes your settings, can't be gotten rid of, and installs a pile of spyware. I don't know how much of that is true of the Windows version, but the Mac version is pretty benign. It doesn't change system settings I don't want it to, it doesn't run automatically in the background, uninstallation is as simple as dragging the single icon from the Applications folder to the Trash, and it uses less RAM than AIM, Safari, Mail, iTunes or even Terminal.
The most annoying thing is that it requires you to sign up for an account on real.com with an e-mail address and password. What's the point of this? It's a hassle, the first time you set it up.
Another minor annoyance is that the application quits when you close the window, and you can't have more than one window open simultaneously, but that's forgivable.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Since we're talking about Helix does anyone have any clues about software that will parse and build reports out of the Helix server logs?
Yeah I could write my own but it'll take me a thousand years with the size of my to-do list ATM so looking for an easy way out.
Not that this is a bad thing at all, but RealVideo 10 is actually an enhanced version--I imagine this might be an understatement--of RealVideo 9, also known as RV9 EHQ (as mentioned on the Doom9 forums). I'm glad to see that people generally aren't misinformedly bashing Real's codecs.
Since you can tell from the forum activity that people are actually testing this stuff out in the open, you know that the tweaking will actually improve things--I remember when WMAv8 came out a while ago, it sounded a lot worse to me than the previous versions because the psychoacoustics were so aggressive about cutting out frequencies.
welcome our new /. reading _Real_ overlords :)
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
they read slashdot!
I didn't find anything, what crap?
Does your new Linux player suck less than Linux RealOne? Goddamn, that's one horrible piece of software. First of all, it's in Motif (that prehistoric piece of shit toolkit) and second of all IT CAN'T SEEK WITHOUT SEGFAULTING. ALL THE TIME. I mean fuck, have you guys even tried using it?
When it comes to their player...I'll have to agree with you. RealOne has been a major disappointment. I hope they can raise the quality of their player. And this quality can be raised by not adding more and more bloat, but streamlining the interface so it stays out of the way as much as possible. Of course, that's my own opinion. But I think more than a few would agree with me on the bloat issue.
But that music service was crap.
I installed their software about a year or so ago, and checked out their media service. I found the software to be buggy, and yes - buffering was a pain in the ass, even on a broadband pipe. Even after subscribing (which I'm still kicking my own ass for), it seemed like there was always something being "offered" to me.
Using their service was really cool, for approximately 30 seconds. Then I realized that I could only listen to Otis Redding on there, essentially. Otis was a cool guy, but I'm not into listening to a bunch of b-side crap that noone else will license.
Uninstalling it was no problem. But when I found that they'd continued to bill me even after cancelling (and not using it), I had no end of trouble. As I'm not hand-to-mouth, I finally just cut the call short and took the loss, versus arguing with someone who sounded like she could barely read.
Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me. Thus, screw Real and the crappy service you barely provided.
Or do I still have to use mplayer for that?
If it can't save the streams, it's basically worthless...
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Um, have you looked at all the crap iTunes puts to load at startup?
...still looking.
Like what?
Have you tried linux? You can use the old realplayer 8 with the new codecs just fine! (In fact, I do that myself). Free yourself of the chains of windows! =P
Quicktime and iTunes have a very large number of problems. But at least they've never tried to embed advertisements into your playback windows.
I have not tried Real's new player yet, and I may not try it at all.
Most people have given up on Real and won't be going back. And with good reason. Real not only got passed in the streaming media format wars, they got lapped like four times.
I gave up on Real years and years ago. Nowadays, if a site requires me to have Real-anything to view their content, I go to another site instead. RealOne was the last straw. Hell, Real 7 was bad enough not to use it, Real 8 made it worse, and RealOne clenched it.
You had your three chances. You lost. You'll simply have to go one *hell* of a long way to make me, as a technically minded person, even consider trying your brand of bloated ad-ridden spyware nonsense one more time. And having Linux support won't cut the mustard. Just saying "we're not as shitty as we used to be" doesn't work. You need to offer me something to consider installing your particular brand of shit again.
Because I removed it *years* ago and have not missed it.
And Real employees, nobody would blame you for cashing out now. You should have cashed out years ago. You're just riding a dead horse, as far as I can tell.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
going against the grain here...I quite like real player for linux...and their media format. Their media format has always been (in my humble view, and I'm just a viewer not a media expert) a good trade off between compactness and quality. I haven't used a windows system for years, so I can't really comment on the spyware stuff...however, for a long time it was almost impossible to play real files on linux...Real publishing a linux player was just one more nicety that made a full transition away from windows possible.
:)
so hazah to the guys at real networks...well done you, I hope you get to read this post
You guys should really all stop holding grudges against Real. Sure, back in the days of 1998-2001 they were all about making money off of advertising, but who wasn't? It's their fault for not reacting quickly enough to fix this, but they're obviously working on doing things right.
RM9 was actually a pretty damn decent codec and was pretty good at doing video at reasonably small file sizes. Quicktime is really bad at resizing its size (try downloading a trailer from Apple's website on "large" and then click on the Maximize button. At least on QTWin, the resulting picture is really bad, even though you started with a pretty good source image. You generally don't have this problem with Divx, xvid, or anything else really). Although Windows media actually isn't a bad piece of tech anymore, it's inherently evil in many ways, and that's enough for me to stop using it.
Let's look at what Real is trying to do now: they're trying to gain technical superiority with better codecs, and as far as I'm concerned, more power to 'em. They're also trying to reduce the blatant advertising they have on their site and in their client; the more of this the better, this was everyone's #1 complaint about Real anyway. They're still continuing on with their helixcommunity OSS stuff, which seems to be an attempt at being more open. Nothing in those three seem really negative to me.
In fact, if you think about it, Real is probably the most crossplatform thing out there. Windows Media is obviously focused on Windows, and lesser so on Mac. Quicktime is obviously focused on Mac, and a slightly lesser degree on Windows. Both of those have zero Linux support. Real's got RP8 on Linux and all those helix builds too. Though mplayer can do all three (w00t), it isn't an official product from any of them, so I wouldn't count that as adding crossplatform capability.
Granted, Real's got a big frigging hole to dig out of, one that they only dug themselves. But at least they're trying, and if they keep this up, they might do a pretty damn good job too. Let's at least keep an open mind while they try.
Real paying attention to Slashdot and working with DOOM9? I think I speak for all of us when I say: WHAT THE FUCK???
Real Networks, and their spectacularly crappy software, are a shitstain on the mediaplayer market. Their spyware/adware is a bloated piece of shit.
The Real company is the most vile company around, bar none.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
What is it all about? Is it good? Is it whack?
Has always been a MUCH better experience for me than on Windows. Maybe it is because all those things people really hate about realplayer can only occur in a Windows environment or maybe they just figure the community wouldn't stand for it.
Anyway, it doesn't seem to make sense ranting and bashing Realplayer when you have partially already decided to be treated like a mindless consumer by your choice in operating systems.
Before you flame me, tell me that all adware or nasty take-control-ware would disappear from Windows if Realplayer were to suddenly disappear.
Face it, it is like spam. For every one of you who got sick of it and just figured a way to uninstall it, 10 other windows users just gave up and decided to live with it.
Maybe if you want software companies to behave differently, you should come to terms with what REALLY is most important about the software you use.
'cause it seems more and more that Microsoft is the only company these days that can make money off of software the good ol' fasion way.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
iTunes load several dameons that run in the background at all times. I'm not in windows, so I can't check, but I know there is a default 'helper' service as well as an 'ipod' service. On my computer iTunes typically eats up a good 30 megs of ram even when not running.
Two processes... ituneshelpher.exe and ipodservice.exe, the first of which I've seen take as much as 11MB of RAM, added to the 30MB the player itself takes up. That's compared to WMP, which is taking less than 6MB. iTunes could use some serious optimization -- what are they doing, running a Quartz emulator in DirectX?
If it is in some .rm .ram .rmvb format I say it's just not worth viewing.
.. and it's the past performance of their bloated, ad-ridden, resource, and file association grabbing spyware-masked-as-a-media-player that was the previous incarnations of their product that drives the negative connotaions surroundning them. I sincerely doubt that they will be able to overcome the stigma. Every single experience my company has had with using Real player has been an absolute nightmare from start to finish, and we have vowed not to install it on anything, if it can possibly be avoided. Installing it is almost like catching some incurable viral wasting disease.. Recently, a large company that our company does work with announced to us they would be basing future video transmission on the Real format. Everyone on our side of the conference table starting laughing at them - we thought they had to be kidding. They agreed with our assessment of the media player market, but confided that this wondrous announcement had come from higher up in the echelons, and they were told to make it work...
Ever since RealOne came out, I flat out refuse...buffering...buffering...buffering...to install anything from Real on my system. I don't care how good the codec is, when I install player software I don't want to deal with a ...buffering...buffering...buffering...zillion popups and filetype takeovers. Evil software, I want you to play .rm files and that's it, not replace WinAmp and throw popups in my face at rand...Server Timeout
-R
Well, RealShittyPlayer folks, if you read Slashdot, I hope you read this. Try not to take it personally. Your product sucks. Sucks SO BADLY that I prefer a Microsoft product over yours, something which I thought would never happen. Windows Media Player is less intrusive, less full of spyware, easier to use, more attractive, and sucks less. Now for the constructive criticism: Get rid of the "messenger" ad spamming service. Oh boy, that's fun. I love ads that come up AFTER I've closed the program. Thank you so very much. Get rid of the "feature" that makes RealShittyPlayer the default application for every media type on my computer. Get rid of the "service" that signs up unsuspecting users for spam for eternity. Make the application skinnable while you're at it. The default is INCREDIBLY ugly. I won't ever use it again anyway, seeing as how it FUCKS UP THE COMPUTER when trying to uninstall it, but I thought I'd put those suggestions out there. One more thing...please go out of business as quickly as possible. kthxbye
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
But what made Real Player (or Real One or whatever it is) worth keeping about for me was that it was the only free player for windows that I found which was capable of showing Quicktime movies full screen properly. Apple only offer that in their paid version and another free front end I found insisted in changing the aspect ratio of the content.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Oh, and if you Real people ARE reading this, I hope you go belly up like you deserve to, crappy companies deserve crappy endings.
I want 2D games back.
FFS, you deliberately HID the free version of the real player. Even though I *know* the link is on the webpage somewhere.. I still would miss it 90% of the time. You are a swarmy company and i hope you DO read slashdot.
There are good media players out there, you just need to know what to look for and where.
Media Player Classic (MPC) is a shining example of a solid, simple player with a good feature set.
Since you're probably interested in being able to play most video formats, you'll want to download Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative to save you the hassle of installing the invasive Quicktime and Real players. Both QT and Real alternative are codecs rather than full blown players, and allow you to view their respective video formats in MPC.
Top it off with the DivX and XviD codecs, and you should be able to play pretty much anything under the sun with the exception of DVDs.
Unfortunatly I don't know of a free codec that can play DVDs, thanks to the RIAA's work on DeCSS. If you have a registered DVD decoder package, you'll probably be able to use MPC with it's supplied codec.
You can now play all your videos in a single place without sacraficing your privacy.
I hope that helps.
Why do I get the feeling that the programmers read Slashdot, and then express Slashdot-ish concerns to the marketing folk, who then smile, nod, and say "You're not our target market?"
Second, this is not a question of OS platform, it is a question of buisness ethics. Maybe you are in that 1% that has a system set up in a sandbox, but what about my mom or dad that does not?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I used RealPlayer when I first got my PC WAAAAY back in the day. I was unimpressed with the average video quality, and I was unimpressed with the clunky interface in the player. As a result, it didn't last out the week on my PC. I never reinstalled it for years afterward, as I never saw a need to.
Last year, someone gave me a CD with a bunch of movies in .RM format on it, and me and my roommate at the time watched them together. I was forced to watch them with RealOne, as I didn't know about RealAlternative at the time. The movies would freeze at times, the player was a miserable experience. I would be doing whatever on my PC, and an ad would pop up advertising something I didn't want (at least you had the balls to admit that it was RealOne displaying the ad. Kudos for that.) The player was clunky, and although better than previous versions, my roommate was well used to me swearing at RealOne every time it froze, crashed, or even just hit the end of the current movie.
The point I am trying to make here is that I have had nothing but bad experiences with RealPlayer. With RealAlternative, I can watch .RM files in Windows Media player without issue, and WMP is one of the few Microsoft products that I have to give kudos to. There just aren't many out there that are any better.
The sad fact of the matter is that I do not feel like I SHOULD give RealPlayer 10 a chance. I don't like the .RM format, and I dislike the player. All the previous versions were horrible, and WMP does the job fine for me.
The only thing which would convince me is the official promotion of Real codecs in other media players. I suspect the ready availability of RealAlternative is already a result of this; Real doesn't want to lose the custom of web sites encoding content in their format by forcing tech-savvy users to stick with their (historically lousy) front-end.
Let's see some third-party reviews first.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
I have one thing to say: I'll consider TRYING the Real-10 codecs when they show-up in ffmpeg. Until then, it's not even a remote consideration.
There's one thing I do like though. They admit that VP6 completely kicks their ass at EVERYTHING. Heh.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Me too.
.rm files I have floating around. Once I have this, I'll have no need of Real Networks anymore.
So that I don't add a unhelpful ``me too'' post to the world, I'll elaborate. I use Win95c (when I use Windows, I'm mostly Linux now). Typically I need to reboot once every week or so. It runs this long because I have a very limited set of programs that I run from Windows. Firebird, Zmud, and Irfanview account for 99% of what Windows gets to run. Opening RealPlayer is a guarantee that I'll have to reboot within 24 hours or so, assuming it doesn't outright crash. I'm through with RealPlayer. It doesn't matter how good Real's new player is, nor does it matter how good Real's new codec is. I'm not going to sit here and passively wait on Real (or Microsoft, for that matter) to get their shit together. I'm actively searching for a replacement so that I can play (or convert) the few
Here's a free tip, guys at Real: release the specs for your old codecs so that nobody has to use your player anymore.
Quality isn't that great, either, unless you're using a Mac.
This is a great way to get more developers on the bandwagon. Slam them repeatedly and without mercy.
I agree, past Real Players for Windows were really bad, but then so were previous versions of every app you ever use.
The recent Windows versions were really not bad if you lost the adware and opt outs.
I'll try this out and if it is good and doesn't fill my Linux system full of adware, spyware and spam, I will buy it.
It's $20. I can invest that much in decent software if it means future improvments. It would be worth $20 just to play iTunes songs on Linux legally, hint, hint.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
QuickTime is a set of API, some of which are pretty damm useful.
QuickTime Player, is a crappy media player.
Now I have a dislike for apps like RealOne as much as the next person BUT all the media players do the same thing. WMP and Quicktime all make programs that don't follow interface standards try to make it so that for viewing movies you need different players. (imagine needing different browsers for different sites or different image viewers for different codecs)
Real is accused of phoning home but so did WMP when you played DVD's. WMP has the same bloat.
So considering they are all equally bad why is real getting all the flak? I think that MS does have the winning strategie. People put up with bloat just as long as it comes pre-installed. Quicktime and Real you have to jump through hoops to add to a windows machine (linux to for that matter) and this puts people in a bad mood even before the program is launched. If then even the tiniest mistake like taking over existing extensions is made people will be pissed off wich is reinforced everytime they are forced to launch your program.
Moral, perhaps release a codec only install that simply allows every player to play your movies. Make your money on the creator side and let the player be as unobstrusive as possible. Of course this carries the risk that your name will disappear. Then decision makers will simply presume that MS is the only codec maker and that everyone runs windows, oh wait. They already do that.
Never mind.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Isn't this company dead yet? The codecs are only half the problem.. the horrible horrible UI is the main reason why Real sucks.
I bet they added 4 more banner spots to their UI and called that a vast redesign.
well i havent tried this new version but i certainly do hope that someone at real reads my comments. in the past i have had such bad experiences with Real hijacking every media type on my computer, not allowing me to rip music cds at anymore than 96kbps unless i "purchase" the add-on, it runs like dog poop, just to get it off my system tray you have to navigate through 6 different prompts and every click on their website instantly redirects you to purchase their "full" version of the player. I absolutely refuse to ever use any real product ever again. I have even come across the instance where i wanted to listen to a realaudio stream, but then chose not to because it would require me to install their crappy RealOne player. i don't care what type of things they "say" they've changed. screw real and their moronic set of advertising monkeys
Those who trade in their freedom for security, deserve neither.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
To put it another way using childhood stereotypes:
Real Player is a girl
Girls with cooties are icky.
.deviatefromtheabsolute.
I downloaded the all_clients_nodist nightly (1/7/04) and i'm having problems playing realmedia 8 content. Has anyone else had this problem?
I clicked on the big, orange, "FREE DOWNLOAD" 14 day trial button (god knows why?) and I get through to the very end and I am expected to enter my credit card details, for a FREE trial?
:-) Thanks, guys!
Firstly, I don't know what possessed me to even think of trying your evil software again, but the deed is done - there's no going back.
Secondly, I saw NO mention of having to hand over my credit card number until AFTER I enter all sorts of information you DON'T need to know and that I will NEVER give you.
Finally, in the spirit of forgiveness, I should actually be *thankful* to Real Networks for actually asking for the credit card number because I pressed ALT F4 the moment I saw it. So, you see, Real Networks have saved me from themselves - a fate worse than death
They want you to get an account to be able to download the Helix Player binaries.
(Call me paranoid, but I'm just not sure I trust a project which claims to be OSS and then wants me to tell them who I am before I d/l their software)
How was actually locating the exe to install? In my past experience with installing RealPlayer, the install was the minor part, and 99% of the bother consisted of trying to navigate Real's labyrinth-like frequently-changing website to find the series of three tiny links in successive pages that would take you to the page where you select your platform and download an installer, while huge, deceptive buttons that make you think they lead to the free version try to lure you off path and into whereever it is that Real sells you their Super Premium Ultra products which requires a credit card number to continue.
Really, this is the part that made me get to the point that now, if someone gives me a media url, if it can't be played in Quicktime or VLC I just don't bother.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
PLEASE MODERATE -1 Unpleasant facts not in favour of Apple!
Click on Free Player.
View page about the non-free player.
Find hidden link for Free Player.
View another page advertising the non-free player.
Find hidden link for Free Player...
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Let me get this right. You guys at Real read Slashdot and are hipster geeks down on the latest flame rumoring in the tech world. You decided to set your player apart by going for ease of use and ubiquitous support for media types and technologies. You support... AAC, AIFF, WAV, and MP3?!?
Ummm... helllooooo? AAC sucks, and it was just recently cracked anyway by the Serial Defendant. How about supporting all the media formats out there now, like MP4, OGG, FLAC, etc.? I mean hell, what really is the difference between iTunes and Real with those four codecs? iTMS? Keep it, I'll rip my own music in a lossless format I can convert from down the road.
What a waste of a company.
-rt
Looks like Real has woken up and found itself losing battle against two major OS manufacturers, who will stop at nothing to promote their own streaming technology with their OS. Real may be trying to hold it's own against Windows/Mplayer and Mac/QT by promoting Realplayer on Linux by pandering to the Linux community.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
There've been several posts about Real alternatives for Windows, but are there any alternative players for Macs? So far, I haven't installed Real on my PowerBook, but I'd like to be able to decode RealAudio (for Marketplace, if nothing else.)
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
On the doom9 forum, a Real employee is answering questions asked in the forum, and he seems to be providing honest answers. For those of you too lazy to go visit there, here's some choice quotes:
Interesting that their songs are 192kbps AAC instead of 128.And no, before anyone accuses me of such, I am not trying to shill for Real here.
Sorry, but "WAAAAY back in the day" was long before REALNetworks... Back when "streaming video" was called "CableTV", and a computer with 4 color video was sweet!
You clicked the wrong button. Try looking in the upper righthand corner and clicking on Free Realplayer
ah-hah, sneaky apple. Thanks.
Everybody is capping on the steaming pile of dung that is the "free as in free to nag you" version of RealPlayer 9. I am attempting to keep an open mind: perhaps Real has reformed its ways, perhaps it sees the light of open access, open standards, and open source.
And so I am downloading the helix client and in order to do so I must agree to two separate licenses with literally something like 6-8 pages of terms and conditions. Who would actually read all this? What does it mean? Wouldn't it just have been simpler to put AYBABTU and be done with it?
Sure doesn't reassure me...
http://metapundit.net
If only Real was more like SCO.. they could spare us the horrible software releases, and just sue people instead.
It'd be less painful that way.
Um... WMP takes up a lot more than 6MB, you just can't see it directly because it's all in the core system.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Funny, I see two options WITH iTunes and withOUT.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
I sent their support crew problem tickets and I got a vapid response about toggling the buffer settings and the internet speed but it didn't make an iota worth of difference. I thought it was because I'm using Mac OS X RealOne but the same behavoir was duplicated on my wife's Windows box.
I wish everyone would fire off a e-note to whoever posts audio material in Real format to persuade them to switch to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis or even heaven forbid Windows Media Player format.
RealOne, RealPlayer or whatever catchy moniker they wish to attach to that piece of rubbish is indeed a pile of garbage...
AZspot
I play all my media files with Media Player Classic and BS Player . I also use Real Alternate and Quicktime Alternate. I just dont see the reason why I would want to install another media player (unless I really wanted bloatware/spyware).
Slashdotters, you need to realize why this press release was posted in the first place. Not only is Slashdot a sizeable audience, it also has members who make very large technical decisions for corporations, which could help/hurt Real.
Real, if you want to make a good product, take a note from Quicktime. I don't want ads when I use your player. Quicktime doesn't have them, why do you need to? I also dont' want to be pestered about registration every time I open it. Asking me once is fine. At the most, you should have an option to be reminded again at a later date, and an option to never be reminded again. Understand that once we have made a decision, we don't want you to keep pestering us and second guessing us. You don't keep people using your software by annoying them.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
This will not help. Real is a dying and dead company, their product ounce had promise, but that was a long time ago, they lost the ball, and jumping in on subscription music now will be too little and too late. Sell your shares, if you where stupid enough to have kept them this long.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Make your player not look like a pile of dog shit that was in the microwave for 10 minutes too long
So what is the proper length of time to put dog shit in the microwave?
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
It's not the options that bother me about the Real player. I know you want to sell a product instead of give one away, but those of us that just want to watch video produced by someone else without doing anything flashy have to sift very carefully through the positively misleading website in order to find the free player. It's like font size=enormous FREE DOWNLOAD; font size=miniscule (but you have to pay after a fortnight); font size=microscopic (damn I suppose we'd better put a link to the free player somewhere. There are plenty of FREE DOWNLOAD links, but the ACTUAL free player is hidden away in a corner somewhere that is very difficult to find.
Then there's the way the program is totally cluttered up with about 1% of the screen area taken up by the actual video, the rest being adverts I don't want to see for products I don't want to buy, then there's the way it jumps up and down on the desktop shouting BUY ME BUY ME BUY ME BUY ME BUY ME BUY ME BUY ME BUY ME BUY ME. No I don't fucking want to buy you. Fuck off. You're only a fucking video player so fucking shut the fuckity fuck up.
Yes, that is the feeling your program generates. I'm not going to touch Real anything until I absolutely have to, and if I'm ever in a position of creating video I certainly won't inflict Real on my audience unless there is absolutely no other choice. I don't give a shit about Real 10 - couldn't care less, won't touch it until absolutely unavoidable. Even if you people say it is millions of times better.
I'm glad to see one of these messages modded up. Everyone's modding similar messages as flamebait. It beats me why people are modding *the truth* as flamebait. Maybe the original article should be modded as flamebait instead.
You guys are going to go out of business one of these days, but it won't be soon enough.
ALL of your programs, from the RealArcade to the RealOne player, are incredibly bloated, invasive, and obnoxious. You guys are experts at shoving unwanted bloated shit down user's throats in the most insidious ways possible.
Start releasing ETHICAL products -- ones that ONLY install the pieces people ACTUALLY WANT, without slyly sneaking in ads, browser toolbars, and integrating deeply and irremovably into the OS in 20 different ways -- and you MIGHT have a shot at beginning to regain any respect most people ever held for your so-called company. Continue as you have been, and you'll go bankrupt like you should.
What's particularly obnoxious to me is that you guys file suit against Microsoft, claiming that they are to blame for your lack of success in the marketplace. Fucking whiners. Your lack of market success is due squarely to your own shoddy products and sleazy tactics. REAL PEOPLE don't use REAL NETWORKS because your stuff REALLY SUCKS.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I just went to the doom9 site and it seems to be all about informing people about how to rip and back up DVDs they own. Granted, I didn't spend a lot of time there though. Why exactly would publishing this info make these people, or those who visit it experts in streaming audio/video codecs?
Wouldn't it be a better idea to have developed the codecs with a community of A/V experts or web content producers?
In my limited view, this statement seems about like: "We at Yugo have developed our new car with close consultation of car wash operators." The one has nothing to do with the other.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Okay, so if I ignore the annoy-ware and spy-ware issues, I still have problems with the basic operation of Real Player. Two to be exact:
1. It is slow to respond to user input, even when it is the only thing running. I admit that a 300 MHz machine is not blindingly fast by todays standards, but Real Player should at least be usable in this environment.
2. Crashes - I can't listen for more than about 20 minutes without it locking up. Sometimes only the program, sometimes Win-98. Frustrating enough to keep one from even trying to use the software.
If only there was a Winamp plugin to play ".rm" files..........
--
Just my $0.02
I got tired of Real constantly crashing its player or my browser (depending on if the plugin was being used). Horrible DRM-encumbered software that I can't stand... fortunately MPlayer under Linux can play some RealVideo stuff (though it works better with Windows Media files)
True story.
For people complaining about Real selling your personal info:
How else are they supposed to pay for the development of their media player?
The other two media player giants each own an entire platform and use the profits to fund their media player development. Unless you're running a non-MS and non-Apple OS exclusively, you've already paid cold hard cash for either WMP or QuickTime. Real doesn't have that kind of income. Heck, even if Real put out a top-notch product and everyone used it to the exclusion of all others, most people would still be paying for WMP whether they want to or not. It's Netscape all over again.
When you download their "free" media player, you are paying for it by giving them your personal information. That information is worth money to them. Money that they use to pay for development. If your personal information is not worth a media player, don't download the player. It's that simple.
I compare Real to Adobe. Both promote a proprietary file format. Adobe makes their file reader easy to obtain and install. It's easy to get, easy to install, unobtrusive. Adobe is content to make their money off of sales of the file creation software. I like Adobe.
Real has a free software viewer, but they hide it as well as they can and try to convince you to buy the pay version. Their viewer pretty much wants to move into your computer, take over everything, and sleep with your girlfriend. Real is trying to make money off the software that creates the file, and the software that reads it. I don't like Real.
Maybe they've changed, but I just visited their site and after 10 minutes of searching, still couldn't find the link to the free player. There's a premium player that will default to the free player after 14 days if I cancel it, but they want my credit information for that one. I don't think so.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
Your signature says that Family Guy sucks. Surely that was a mistake. Family Guy is one of the most hilarious shows ever created (many episodes easily beat the Simpsons for insanely funny jokes).
How anyone could think that show sucks I just don't understand...
True story.
how is it that EVERY post has scored 5...
has the whole community IQ level raised to such astoundishing levels overnight?
or is it that for ONCE everyone agree on the subject?
... y Dios vio que Linux era bueno... Genesis 99.666
I can't give you a definitive answer, however I was watching Iron Chef the other day when, coincidentally, this was the featured ingredient. I believe the challenger used dog excrement in a simple soup with yellow broth as well as an ice cream-based desert. Neither of these required the use of a microwave.
The iron chef was Iron Chef China. First, he fried some of the dog feces to make the one of the staple Chinese dishes: sweet and sour fecal matter.
But then it happened: he put a small amount of brown sludge into the microwave to make New York-style pizza. I'm not entirely sure what length of time was required, but it was less than 4 minutes and probably somewhere around 2 and a half minutes.
Feel free to experiment with this new culinary treat and if you figure out the proper amount of time, please reply. I look forward to hearing about your recipes and results!
True story.
I don't get it, your post was helpful but you posted AC... there's something fishy about this. Did you beat your karma addiction or what? If so, please come to the karma whore support group over on Anti-Slash =)
True story.
I just registered in the Helix Community. Once again I had to read through and agree to a "terms of use" statement. I hate to do such things.
I think we do need a well known BSD/GPL/LGPL equivalent for "Terms of Use"-Agreements. If we had such agreements I only need to read the name of the agreement and know what is in it. That's one of the big advantages taht BSD/GPL/LGPLed software has over software with non-free licenses.
That's the euphemism of the decade.
Game... blouses.
I didn't know that. That is news.
Thanks.
Quack, quack.
In Sony's Open MG Software (for use with Net MD minidisc players), you can only copy the same track to your MD player 3 times and have to use a 'check-in, check-out' system. To circumvent this you don't use some l33t open source sw that some dude is his basement wrote. No! Realplayer comes with a neat plugin that writes direct to your MD player and means you don't have to check in tracks at all. I've always wondered how Real got away with that? Why would Sony let them impelement that feature? I still hate the bloat, but I use Realplayer quite frequently because of the plugin
I just tried to download the Helix Player Binary. I again needed to accept a license which states:
...
2. LICENSE RESTRICTIONS.
a) You may not: (i) permit other individuals to use the Software except under the terms listed above; (ii) modify, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or use any other method (including "clean room" development) to learn the source code of the Software
So, if I agree to that license, does that mean I am never ever again allowed to do a clean room implementation for any Real formats?
Thanks for any thoughts about this.
We read Slashdot here at Real, especially when the subject of our company or technology comes up, so we know some of you may not have liked recent versions of our player.
Man, the Windows users here are coming out in droves to clown on you pretty hard. I kinda feel bad for you. Anyway, as a Linux/Solaris user, I do appreciate that you provided a sreaming player back when no other company did, so I could watch the lectures at mrsi.org. However, I must admit I wish they'd use something more open
Kudos! People without a TV are sooo superior!
Clicked the button in my freedesktop.org KDE/Gnome menu and it worked.
No spam, popups, system tray crap, or anything else in the Linux version. Though they should
Here's the package, by the way, for Fedora Core 1.
Here's the source package
If the files aren't there right now, they will be soon.
Why should I pay for the right to use a media player which I dont even need?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Your codecs might not suck so bad anymore but I still can't to enjoy my content the way I'd like to. Get rid of the DRM and maybe then I'll stop avoiding Real like the plague.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Well shit, you missed out on the best part. On the next page it asks for your social security number, ATM PIN, and mothers maiden name.
I note that Mr. Foreman has no response for the (justified) threads that knock the hell out of Real One player for being the bloated POS that it is. However, he does have time to respond to the "encouraging" comments.
Personally, I stream my radio show via Real and Windows Media. I'd kill for a legit version of Real Player that worked as well as "Real Alternative" and was easy to download without navigating through 3 pages of garbage.
I wish there was another alternative, but OGG and MP3 streams sound like hell at low bitrates. Ditto for QT Audio.
http://forms.real.com/real/player/blackjack.html There is a good reason to like real. As long as you know how to deal with the junk . . . it's not bad . . . they are just trying to make money . . . give them a break.
I found a program called "Real Alternative" that plays Real video files on MSWindows. I think I first found it from another Slashdot post. It works well without any of the bad stuff of the official players from Real.
.rpm) .ram .rmvb .rpx .smi .smil) .smi and .smil files only play the first part of a clip. This is a limitation of the current Media Player Classic.
From the installer notes:
---
More information and updates can be found on the following websites:
http://www.freecodecs.com
Now a "Coming Soon. But domains from us" page
http://mirror.edskes.com
Redirects to http://home.hccnet.nl/h.edskes/mirror.htm that has downloads available
Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia files. This way you can play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer/RealOne Player. You do need a player that is capable of playing RealMedia. The included Media Player Classic supports it and works very well.
Supported:
- RealAudio (.ra
- RealMedia (.rm
- RealText (.rt)
- ReadPix (.rp)
- RealMedia embedded in webpages
---
The player says it is GPL by "Gabest". He has programs at http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/. He wrote the "Media Player Classic" that RealAlt extends.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Actually, on my Win2k box here, iTunesHelper.exe is sitting at about 4.8MB, and iPodService.exe is at 3.3MB. It ain't exactly svelte, but it ain't 30 megs either. :)
Okay I found a substitute for Real Player. Have not yet tried to use it, but the site note reads:
a lterna tive.htmt ernative/p rivate/1.11a re/04_data.ht ml
Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia files. This way you can play RealMedia files without having to install the RealPlayer/RealOne Player. You do need a player that is capable of playing RealMedia and the included Media player Classic supports it and works very well.
Check out:
http://reformed-theology.org/downloads/real
http://lekkerekwal.com/downloadz/RealAl
http://home.wi.rr.com/johnhood/freew
Quit your bitching ...
It's FREE!
If you don't want to run RealPlayer run HELIXPLAYER.
It's Open Source and runs on Linux!
the good folks over at Fedoranews.org has put out a installation guide that some users may find useful.
I'll use the real alternatives that others have posted to this article instead. I've been bitten once too many times with that Real filth to risk polluting my machine with it again...
There's also an alternative Quicktime player, I believe, made by the same person. They've both very nice, small, no-BS programs for watching the appropriate media. Two thumbs up.
PS: Interested? Just google for "Quicktime Alternative" or "RealPlayer Alternative". You can often find both programs at the same site.
Seriously; KMplayer works great, if you're browser is Konqueror.
For Gnome users, sorry; not much help there.
$0.99/song and $9.95/album
and Hi-MD with 1GB capacity. The new MD walkmans cost $200 to $400.
Interesting to see how Apple would respond.
I agree with most of the comments other slashdotter's replied with... I avoid real content at all costs. not because of the quality or lack of.. not because its hard to use or hard to get... simple because the player sucks... too intrusive...
iPodService.exe (runs as SYSTEM)
iTunesHelper.exe (runs as Administrator)
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
You dare say anything bad about Apple? Curse you -1 Troll and Flamebait!
Tried it. Test system is an older AMD K6-2 450 with 96 MB RAM and ATA-66 33 GB HDD running Win98.
*) You still have to hunt to find the free installer, as well as deal with an annoying amount of popup ads.
*) It's 10 MB - not so bad on a 1.5 Mb DSL line.
*) When you click the link, you immediately get a prompt about installing the Real One installer - but I don't want Real ONE, I want Real 10... it took a bit more poking around to discover that's what I wanted... it's "Real One v.10". (Wonder where 2-9 went?)
*) The installer takes a long time to run.
*) The installer still asks a million irrelevant questios, the answer to all of which was "n/A".
*) There's still an anoying registarting process to go thru. "F---@you.com was taken, as was "f---you@now.com" and "f---you@rightnow.com" . I settile on something lame that I've already fogorron for the emailaddy.
*) After going thru it all, and rebooting the system oce, I get illegal ops everytime I try to run RP.
*) Real player 10 is still the piece of s---t that Real one/9 always was.
Ugh. Steer me clearof this, thankyou!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
You want to save your company? Listen to this stuff. And then act upon it accordingly.
Do you know how many people (not geeks, just people who just want their computers to work) I've told to just forget about RealPlayer and deal with the fact they're not going to see that [dumb|funny] video of the bear in the tree falling out and hitting the trampoline hosted on their local TV broadcaster news page?
Regardless, this may all be moot as I'll probably never touch RP again with a 50 parsec clown pole unless I start hearing some really positive chatter from trusted sources. And even then.
The Real corp has totally shot itself in the foot over the last few years and alienated almost it's entire userbase through it's shady business practices and intrusive "features".
Fuck all that noise, and fuck it good.
You ever hear about this kind of sheer moral outrage and unbridled anger when it comes to even windows media player? Winamp? Quicktime? No? Think about it...
Got this photo from somewhere, I forgot. It's great. Somebody went up to the RealNetworks building and slapped a big handwritten "BUFFERING" sign over their logo!
http://www.krellan.com/rant/real.html
(at bottom of page)
Does anybody know where this picture was originally from? I'd like to link back to the source, but haven't found it online anymore.
I made this rant in response to a frustrating experience trying to install RealPlayer 8. They have improved since that time (I think that version 8 was a low water mark for them).
They still haven't figured out how to stop loading delays caused by buffering. The secret is to bang the rocks together, guys! Or in this case, the secret is to download the data at maximum speed from the previous 15-or-so seconds of content, and start the client playing immediately, and by the time the buffer fills, the client will be caught up to the current live content. Real still hasn't done this! (In fairness, it might be patented: the old SurferNETWORK was the first to figure it out, and they might have patented it.)
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
How else are they supposed to pay for the development of their media player?
It's called selling on the server end.
It's a pretty good business model, so as long as you don't piss off your customers on the client end so much that everyone hates you, and nobody wants to buy your server product because you suck.
(I'm not a fan of real. They could have made money in the long run, but threw it all away for the quick buck.)
The Internet is generally stupid
You can take your new RealPlayer and shove it.
Pretending that you NOW care about your users...after bombarding them with unwanted ADVERTISING CRAP and pissing on their privacy...is TOTAL BULL.
TOTAL BULL is what a spinner like you spouts best.
RealPlayer is on the road to OBLIVION.
Get your resume ready...your tongue and lower-back muscles, too...and see if Uncle Bill will let you apply for a job after you tickle his sphincter.
seriously
According to this article, the Real Music Store will be offering 192kbps AAC downloads.
I think this is a great idea, and it could potentially steal customers from Apple.
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
So I followed the link to their web site, clicked on the "Real One Player" link in the upper right hand corner, filled out the info. And then it downloaded Real Player 9.
kforeman, the story submitter, is talking about the Linux product. The Windows product is still just as bad (better codec, but who cares).
/. thinks? I thought the goal of Helix was to improve relationships with other proprietary hardware or software vendors. We OSS/FS zealots will only ever be interested in your product when we have a commitment that it's going to get opened up all the way. We're not going to start using RAM files in our products when that would lock us in to crappy tools on Win32.
If you didn't like their Windows product before, you won't like it now.
Hey, KForeman, why do you care what
Is there some reason we should expect your less ethical departments to improve in the future?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
real is reading this? two words for you then. you suck.
haven't used the shitty product since about version 6 or 7, and don't plan on installing it ever again.
and yes, i have experience with it. i was co founder of a streaming video company, based on real's product. what cost us $10000 US to do with real we ended up doing for free with windoze.
The only info I want to read about a new version of the Real Player is that it DOESN'T alter my XP sound scheme. Until those fine people at Real decide to leave my sound settings how *I* want them and not how *they* want them, I regret to say that their software will remain unwelcome on my machine.
Damn you Bill Gates!(TM)
Did your sig forget a period? Damn you.
Bill Gates!(TM)
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I just downloaded and installed RealPlayer10Beta.exe (the only version available for download from Real)
It's really a vast improvement for the RealPlayer family. Yep, it's still bloated all-in-one solution but surely more slick and nice-looking one.
And it's really not as annoying in terms of advertisment etc.
So everything guys from Real said is true - very nice change!
my thinking would be this
you "real networks" have a leg up on most content software, you have a name and a format that ppl recognize. you have a lot of competition that WILL smother your business if you do not rebuild your name. see, i am in a particularly interesting position (and i assume there are many many others like me.)when my family and friends come to me for computer advice, or if i am sitting at their computer, i will give them advice about what software they should use to perform different tasks. i may also chastise them for using certain software. when i see ANYTHING 'real' related on their computer i casually inform them of your past history and why no one should use real software. then i promptly uninstall and erase any trace i can find of your software, then install a better media player. to make things even more interesting, my family or friends will usually not even remember why they installed the real player, so they probably will not even realize its gone. these people trust me, because i have earned their trust. you on the other hand have abused their trust. you are one of the reasons they have spyware on their computer and annoying popup windows asking them to upgrade (while they scratch their heads and say 'whats real player and why should i update it?') to sum it up, if you do not make a serious attempt to win back my respect (and again, i stress, there are many in my position) you will fall to the wayside and be lost forever with 1,000's of other once promising pieces of software. its not my duty to figure out how to make money without abusing peoples trust. thats your company and its employees job to figure out. but i do consider it my duty to help my mother, grandmother, cousins, friends, etc... with their computers, and i will do my duty, now do your job to save your company.
Michael
--
Nerdy by Nature!
Gator have announced they have released a new version of (whatever the hell it is their software is called) without any sypware, malware, hijacking of PC settings, or displaying popup adverts every 3rd webpage viewed.
The Gator press release states "Everyone deserves a second chance!"
This is exactly what I'm looking for. I no longer need Real Player or Quicktime.
This looks vaguely interesting. My big question is whether or not I will be able to make use of the Realplayer Music Store under linux using the helix player (or indeed any other Real product... it just seems that the helix player is considered the best one to use).
Also, a relatively minor note: I accept (although I dislike it) that any online music store that wants any chance at all of dealing with the record companies will have to use DRM of some sort or another. But for heavens sake don't patronise us in the press releases:
"Consumers can securely transfer tracks purchased in the RealPlayer Music Store to their [...specific hardware players mentioned...]"
Securely, yes, for the record companies. Don't DARE try and claim that this is for the security of your consumers.
I really have to ask - why NS 4.7 as a 'standard'. Netscape themselves don't support (on to version 7 already). It's essentially 1997 technology. I bet you don't support or push IE 3, do you? I truly don't understand people still supporting or demanding people using NS 4.7. Could you explain please?
creation science book
I went to RealNetworks.com, and thought I should give it a try on my Windows box. I however, surfed in from my Mac OSX box. Guess what, I can not download a Windows version from Mac OSX! Real keeps giving me Mac only links and options on their pages, not even a link for "other OSes". Even if I click on a link that explicitly says "Real player 10", I come to a download page for the older player for OS X.
This is so stupid, there is not even the possibility to read about Real 10. I thought I give Real another try, but these bozoz doesn't seem to be capable of doing anything right, goodbay forever Real!!
Well, a few months ago, someone from Real contacted me and told me that I could just use the above link to go straight to the free player. Note that just "http://www.real.com/freeplayer/" doesn't work; you have to have the referrer code "?rppr=wrek" after it -- "wrek" being my organization and presumably replaced by other strings in other cases. If you leave it off you get thrown into the regular obfuscation queue.
I'd have to agree with those that say that Real appears to genuinely be trying to be better about all this.
One simple rule for its versus it's
(you can't install it on more than 2 machines?)
(you can't call the plugins via, say, mplayer?)
(DRM, yummy!)
WTF?
Note: you can't disable it: only change the frequency
No thank you.. I'll pass!
Ok, so im willing to give RealNetworks a chance. Heres my take on Helix.
;))
I downloaded and installed the rpm with no problem.
Clicking Applications->Sound and Video shows an icon in the expected place (a lot of programs dont bother to put icons in the gnome/kde menu).
Clicking the icon brings up the Helix Player almost instantly. I must admit, it doesnt *look* like Real Player, which is definitely a Good Thing(tm).
The interface is clean.
Help->Contents doesnt work, neither does Help->Search or Help->Accelerators. (But who actually asks for help in linux eh?
Im kinda doubting that there is any spyware in the program, since the source code is available. But if someone else could shed some light on this, it'd of course be helpful.
So, jokes aside Helix Player works and works as i'd expect a music player to work. A *HUGE* improvement from the old Real bloatplayer.
It's the incessant communications that the Real player has with God only knows what servers. I am reluctant to fully open my firewall to allow the Real player unfettered access to the 'net because I cannot rationalize all of the attempts it makes to communicate with whatever servers it is trying to connect to. For example, when I play a media file located on my hard disk, why does the player try to contact a server on the 'net? If I block the connection attempt, the local media file plays just fine; so obviously the connection is not needed to play the file. Why is the connection attempt done?
Why does the Real player10 beta continue the previous version's habit of displaying the last file I played in the yellow "Now Playing" area of the window even though that file is not playing anymore and does not even exist on my disk anymore? Sometimes I would [ahem] prefer not to have the name of the files I have played to be blazen across the window, highlighted by a bright yellow background. The filename persists even if I close and reopen the player.
All this indicates to me that Real is not interested in preserving my privacy, and that is a shame.
> we know some of you may not have liked recent versions of our player.
> This release represents a much friendlier direction for us
I wonder if they'd admitted such things or even just the need for a "friendlier direction" yesterday, before they had a new product to push. It's easy to say that "yeah, our previous product was crap, here, use the new one instead, you'll like it much better" than to admit that your current product is crap and that you're working on doing better but have nothing to offer just yet. The former is just PR with a customer-friendly spin, the latter is a true change of heart.
We read Slashdot here at Real, especially when the subject of our company or technology comes up
Good, in that case I wanted you to know your product is a memory hog and leaks memory like a sieve.
Oh, wait a minute, I was listening to rap music, that was part of the song. Never mind.
Everybody say hotel, motel, Holiday Inn....
All's I know is that the wmplayer.exe process takes was taking up 6MB above and beyond the OS, while the iTunes processes were taking upwards of 40MB above and beyond the OS.
"You just can't see it directly because it's all in the core system" doesn't really make sense. Surely some of the widget libraries are loaded all the time, and it uses the IE control for the main info page, but what "core system" processes are used when I'm tooling around the media library?
For what it's worth, Apple could have used native system widgets too, but chose not to.
rule to prevent realplayer (or helix player) from phoning home and spying? How about a rule to prevent autoupdating/upgrading of the software? If I can use Helix player without being spied upon or without it automagically altering software (itself or any other, makes no difference...it is wrong) without my say-so, then I might try it. Otherwise, I'll skip by any Real streaming media and for all else keep using the best player on Earth: Mplayer.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Real is the only thing I've ever seen that crapped out playing a video file on my hard drive, claiming it was network congestion.
Ever since that, I've always regarded it as a joke. It has gotten better over the years, and the enterprise edition works a lot better than the standard and gets rid of a lot of the normal complaints about it being intrusive.
But still, there is that lasting impression of network congestion playing a file off my hard drive.
BBC streams their feeds in RM format, and advises their web listeners to download the free Real player to hear them.
Real (apparently) decided that this was a Revenue Opportunity. Recent versions of the free Real player *don't* play BBC feeds (you get some bogus error message about missing codecs), while the Real webpage has big links inviting you to pay them money to hear the BBC.
You can still play BBC if you downgrade to version 7.x or thereabouts.
If you have an ATI video card, their's is free.
FusionSoft DVD 4.5, uses Fraunhofer codec - French site
4.5 again, other french site
FusionSoft, other versions, german(?) site
So this is why Real has decided to sue Microsoft. They released a new product that probably won't be able to compete with Windows Media Player and they need some extra money and free advertising so they won't go into the toilet as fast.
I get ya.
We read Slashdot here at Real
Real Player is the *last* player that I would consider installing on any functional windows system (I would rather install WinAmp v3 first).
The sheer intrusiveness of the software combined with the sleazy opt-out (oops, you opt'd in!) tactics mean that I will choose *not* to play the content rather then jump through the hoops.
If that's what's required to make your business plan work, well I'll shed no tears when the company goes under.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
I value all of your opinions, but I like Real. There codec works great and thier player is pretty good. Yes, there are some things that need to be disabled and modified durring installation and once it is runninng, but after that it is really good. It plays anything even DVDs, and it it will burn DVDs and capture audio, all for free! If one goes in and changes some settings from the get go (it really isn't that hard or hidden), they shouldn't have any problems. I've been using Real for years and they work great.
Exactly...and I'd add what I told MCI (yeah, them of the "Friends and Family" deal, even if that is not the full reason for my issues with them) a few years ago "your practises are unethical and I will not regret it when your company goes under, and will not buy from/deal with anyone who buys your company, so make sure your management hears this and counts is as negative 'goodwill' ". And I did live to see them go bankrupt and it felt great (delete ego here).
Real has just about as much good will with me, unless they SINCERELY change - and I might consider them again in a couple of years. Perhaps their Marketers' moms should have sent the guys to their rooms and grounded them more often when they acted like jerks even when younger.
O.K.
/.
1. Yup, we read
2. Yup, during install, the user can choose to set up a shortcut for AOL. AOL is not installed.
3. During install, you're given the option of starting up the player on install or not.
So, we've put our money where our mouth is.
Actually, no- the original poster was correct. WMP frees up memory not in actual use from time to time, notably when you minimize it.
I'm running mplayer (www.mplayerhq.hu) and I can play all the Windows Media, Realplayer, Quicktime, XVID, DivX, MPEG, etc. video files you could want.
You can even encode from one to the other pretty simply with mencoder (comes with mplayer).
Why bother with all these other players? mplayer even runs on Windows and Mac boxen.
My $0.02
In addition to the two services iTunes installs that have been mentioned, it also installs Quicktime 6.5. Quicktime puts an icon in the system tray and puts qttask.exe into the startup items in your registry. Sure, you can remove both of those, but it should really be an option while installing. iTunes is not a good alternative to Realplayer if you're looking for fewer unwanted icons and less memory usage.
I work for RealNetworks, and I am the first to admit RealPlayer is not my favorite media player. For video, Media Player Classic (MPC) is, and yes, I use MPC to play my RV9-EHQ aka RV10 content.
Previous RealPlayers have been pretty impolite to put it mildly, and along with so many other computer users, I have been ticked off by its behaviour in many ways. It has been possible to make it well mannered, but it has included being forced to delete certain files to prevent that annoying Message Center. However, it has not been spyware in a long time, even though one old player did send back some usage information. That's long gone, but it's hard to be forgiven for that mistake.
Considering how past players have created such a bad reputation, this post is probably futile, but anyway... Thanks to those few positive posts though, especially for the Linux and OS X players. It is nice to see someone taking the time to give it a another chance.
This RealPlayer 10 is better than before, it is fast, small, and does not run +10MB services in the background, like one well known example, name withheld. However, this post is not really about performance, even though a lot could be said about improvements in this area. More importantly in this discussion, it is also better in terms of its behaviour, albeit less better than me, many of my co-workers, and all of you, had hoped for.
Here's what you need to do when installing:
So to summarize, a few clicks are needed to opt-out, you have to "sign in" the first time. Yes, somewhat annoying, but that's about it. It could have been better, but compared to many other examples, it's not that terrible. Since it has been so very bad in the past though, it clearly should have changed more to make a shining example, but since it is RealNetworks' main vehicle for generating revenue, there is a lot of nervousness about changing things too quickly.
Download the free RealPlayer 10 Beta here, with no re-direction or sales tricks:
http://www.real.com/freeplayer/?rppr=slashdot
And you can find me the forum below with more information about all the gory technical details about what's new with the Real 10 Platform, including RV 10, and RA 10 (AAC!):
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid= 68245
I don't think Real has done anything all that bad in the past. They are a company, guys! They are going to have make money to stay in business. Advertisement is one of the common ways a company tries to collect revenue without having to charge the user money. If you disliked this so much, did you ever write them even a single email telling them so? If so, you are part of the problem -- complaining to yourself accomplishes nothing.
I applaud Real's attempt to make a player that is better than the next guy and is attempting to be free. I've worked for a few companies now, and I know that getting everyone to agree on making something GPL is most often laughable. It takes a big culture change. Reward those who make that culture change with kind words, don't be rude!
Consider the guy who was on the fence when these decisions were being made. If he read half of these comments he'd just think that these people just want the software for free, they care about nothing else! (He might even be right.)
The article stated that Real employees read Slashdot - at least they could have the grace to post as such and not as Anonymous Cowards.
Congratulations on making the world a lamer place. RealNetworks is at the absolute top of my list of the world's most fucked companies. The fact that your slimy products continue to pollute the Web is amazing to me, since you scumbags have spent every cent of goodwill your company ever had. I mean, you guys suck so bad that EVERY single time I come across Real content at a website, I send an email to that site explaining that if they continue to host Real content, I will not visit them any more. I'm not sure how Real makes its money (i.e., which of your nickle-dime shakedown schemes work), but hopefully I have cost you some license fees through my personal campaign against your crap products. The greatest consolation for me, in any case, is getting to see you die a slow and painful death.
You are far too late, Kevin Foreman. Real is banished to the land of dust and wind for failing to respect its users. I'm sure your company will continue to invent more absurd schemes to remain in business, but now that your end users are entirely alienated, there is next to nothing that Real can do to restore our confidence. There are so many people who will relish Real's downfall. My advice to you: get another job ASAP.
So, what's so invasive about modern versions of QuickTime? You get the "upgrade to pro" message about once a month. Other than that it has always been pretty polite.
My video compression blog
I wouldn't install a Real product on my desktop PC because its full of spyware. Can you imagine the kind of liberties that Real will take with your privacy if you install that shit on your PDA/Phone?! Dude, you're gonna be getting calls and emails every fifteen about "updates" to the player. Forget about it. Don't make the mistake so many have made before you. Don't trust Real. Don't do it. Step away from the the installer.
I don't know about you, but *any* amount of time spent by a pile of dog shit in my microwave is too long.
> They want you to get an account to be able to download the Helix Player binaries.
Umm that's a lie, I downloaded the HelixPlayer Binaries last night without an account just fine. Maybe you all should give the new Real a chance rather than spreading FUD.
And No, I don't work for Real.
You can STOP WMP from phoning home.
In the Options screen (go to Tools > Options...), then go to the Privacy tab, and start deselecting everything you can find. The first thing I did is deselect all of those when I got my computer. Real doesn't give you these options. I uninstalled Real on my Dell laptop a month after I received it; the Real popups were just too annoying and too much of a drain.
Personally, what Real should do is completely gut RealOne or whatever they're calling it, rip out everything ad related, bring it down to the bones, and then start building it back again. A fresh interface design would be great too.
If they did that, I might be persuaded to bring Real back into my computer, but until then, forget it.
Today I found out that I hurt if I press down on my stomach around the area where my liver is.
Looks like I'm going down...
RealPorn is what takes between a husband and his wife. It's fun when you're one of the participants, but watching it? No thanks. Sex is basically two hairy animals wrestling in a stream of sweat, saliva and various other bodily fluids.
I've never been able to have sex because of that. I have serious problems with the physical aspect of women.
So you don't miss not having a tv? I'm glad you got one then, that must have been awful.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
When you use Real Audio to rip and encode a CD it encodes it as an AAC using an encoder made by Coding Technologies. However, rather than put it into a .MP4 container, it is put into a
Real Audio .RA container. What a shame. It would
be nice if the same container could be used between
the non-DRM'd AAC content you get from ripping
with iTunes versus ripping with Real Player 10.
Sean
funny
Actually Family Guy does suck, objectively.
can i run your new realplayer without it adding itself to the startup routine EVERY TIME I RUN IT?
.rm in a decent player, then id never have to touch your awful software ever again. same goes for you quicktime fellas.
ive been using realplayer for YEARS, (its the only format NASA-TV is broadcast in far as i can tell) and ive HATED EVERY SINGLE VERSION for this reason alone.
ive gone so far as setting up a special script to run to disinfect my system after having run realplayer.
the best gift you could give us is a codec that allows us to play
perhaps you could make a specific version for the web-savvy downloader, one that doesnt include all your media bookmarks (ads) one that doesnt put itself in the systray EVEN WHEN IM NOT USING IT. & one that NEVER EVER EVER PUTS ITSELF IN THE STARTUP ROUTINE. i might download that & give it a try, until then ill stick w/ realplayer 7 because i know how to declaw it.
incedently, why does every single program in existence think it needs to load on startup? everytime i work on a clients machine they have 30 icons in the sys tray & 1% free system resources. I usually spend half of a service call removing garbage from startup, whats the point?
one more tip, people hate it when your webpage is browser specific. Try opening it from opera sometime & youll see what i mean.
Well thanks for that, saves me the trouble of downloading the new version only to have to uninstall it.
But I'd be willing to go through that whole rigamarole if I could end up with an application that would play real media formats and NEVER attempted to access the Internet for ANYTHING without my requesting it to. This means NO updates, NO codec downloads, NO media info lookups.
And NO means NO. If I turn off auto-update, it doesn't mean turn it back on in 30 days, it means I don't want it to do auto anything!, ever.
I also don't need to have it load on start-up, and I wish the install would have an option to get that whatever out of my system tray, rather than my having to hunt it down and disable it.
Why do you believe that they deserve another chance?
OTOH, earlier reports have claimed that experimental evidence suggests that the new version is no more trustworthy than the prior ones. Now one cannot say for certain that any particular report should be believed, but one can say for certain that Real has a past history of deceit. I can't say for certain, because I have only installed two of their products...the last one many years ago. At the time I thought that I might have missed some statements that would make them technically innocent of lying...but not innocent of deceit. I haven't heard anything since that makes me think that they have gotten more trustworthy, and I've heard much which indicates that they have gotten even worse.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Real's problem is that they think they're competing with Microsoft. And so they try to play like Microsoft -- with complicated EULAs, Bloatware, complex registry changes, etc.
What Real fails to understand is that Microsoft is not its competition: iTunes is its competition. WinAmp is its competition. MusicMatch is its competition. And the list goes on and on.
Real continuously loses marketshare -- not to Microsoft, but to the dozens of smaller, less install-intensive players on the market. And there's no end in sight either. Every release of RealPlayer gets more bloated, and more intrusive, opening the playing field to the smaller, more powerful, more feature-rich, easier to install, less expensive (if not *free*) players which are just over the horizon.
Personally, like most people who know, I'm still waiting for "el DJ" http://www.eldj.com
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Ad intensive, buggy software, intrusive privacy, and a tool of marketing/sales organizations. Let 'em die. Try using tcpdump(1) on a network where someone opens a real media clip, and see all the info that gets sent back. You'll never use real ever again.
Wasn't the whole deal with Real that they were gonna make all their money providing services?
The only reasons I've heard of people disliking Family Guy for are these:
Family Guy has many jokes that poke fun at racial and religious issues. Some people do not like these and transfer their hatred of these jokes onto the entire show.
Additionally Family Guy does not take itself seriously and often has incoherent plot twists. These are intended to be funny to my knowledge.
True story.
Dude, /., you have to be pretty bummed out by now.
Youve got a long way to go "Put your money where your mouth is". The only other programs that have engrained (sp?) itself into the Windows the way Real has is the Norton line of garbage. If you guys do read
Do yourself a favor. Print out this whole thread and take it to the suits. Pick the 5 worst things that people complain about and do something about it. Here's my suggestion:
Fix that pile of crap codec. It looked OK in '96 but in the year '04, it just aint cutting it.
P.S. Did your guys fix the 0-day 'sploit on the Real Servers that was causing Yahoo! so much grief? Wow...that one really sucked, huh?
With all the lies from Real in the past, being caught out and fixing the 'mistake', only to be caught out again in a different version a month later...
/. uses any Real products anyway?
What makes you think anyone on
What's Real good for anyway? Sound clips for new albums? I'd rather go to the shop and listen there to the whole thing than torture my PC.
Remember, Real was started by a guy working for MS. He took what he learned about audio codecs there and prolly his stock options to open a new Co.
from download.com:
The program still suffers from the intrusive installation, file-type hijacking, and upgrade harassment that have plagued it since its inception. Overall, though, RealPlayer has taken steps in the right direction. Users of earlier versions should certainly upgrade.
Mod parent down
I mainly used the real player to sample musical snippets from over at amazon.com.
.viv video files. I found out that Real had bought the format, and in order to install their .viv player, I had to wade through pages of porn. I eventually installed a program called VivTV instead, written by a guy called Allen Cheng which admirably did the job.
However now (at least when using Internet Explorer), Amazon has employed it's own Music Sampler which, for me, doesn't require rebuffering every couple of seconds like Reals used to do. (Yes, Amazon still has samples in Real and Windows Media format, but this new sampler is so much better). I don't think I'll be using Real much any more.
Also, I remember a while back I was trying to install a player which played the old
da5id
Troll? It's the fucking truth, asshat-modergaytor.
I don't give a rat's arse how long ago that was; fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me. I wouldn't touch one of your products with someone else's bargepole. Ever.
In short: it is shit and so are you.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Mods on crack A-FUCKING-GAIN ?
/. but also working at Real or something? /. seems to suck each and ech day a little bit more....
Whats up whith that? Seriously. Are there mods not only reading
Inspired by this attempt to restore faith, here's a comic strip about the issue:
http://www.ok-cancel.com/archives/week_2004_01_09Well, defining the term 'filth' when it comes to media players is pretty ridiculous. You've already got Windows Media bundled with most versions of Windows... it's not Real's fault Microsoft can't make their APIs for Windows smoother to develop for.
EFnet #4am
:P :P :P :P
2000-01-03
<fRy> Any of you have the latest Realplayer warez?
<`phillip> WTF?#$&$@^*#%&(#$^&
<`phillip> get the free version
<fRy> There's a free version? I checked.. looks like their site has SLIGHTLY been changed.
<`phillip> haha, they fucking hide the free version
<Norbule> it's there
* fRy searches
<`phillip> HOLY FUCK
<`phillip> where the fuck did they hide it?
<fRy> I couldn't find it. I was just going to get the realplayer 7 plus horseshit and crack it
<fRy> but now you can't even download trialware
<fRy> have to enter a fucking credit card
<fRy> there's two companies that without a doubt i would never buy their software
<fRy> Microsoft and Real.
<`phillip> http://www.real.com/player/
<fRy> Fuck both of those cocksuckers.
<`phillip> found it
<fRy> That's the PLUS 7 version.
<`phillip> no
<fRy> HOLY HELL.
<`phillip> link at bottom
<fRy> Nice find, bro man.
<`phillip> hehe
<Norbule> teehee
<Norbule> another corporation's attempt to befuddle a user into buying shareware is foiled
<fRy> Fuck those cocksuckers.
<fRy> I hate Real.
<fRy> They do the worst thing you can possibly do.
<fRy> They, without your permission, add links to your startup folder, startup ini's,
and other places.
<fRy> So that when you start windows.
<fRy> Assloads of their propaganda is fed to you.
<fRy> Assholes.
<`phillip> i agree.
Phillip