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.
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.
.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
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
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.