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.

Comments

RealSoftware..."We Suck Less"

[the arbiter]

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