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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.
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
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.
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;
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?
So, just out of interest...a free player, without spyware...how are they supposed to make money to pay their developers?
hey, I hate spyware as much as the next guy, and actually, because I don't run windows, I don't see it...but these guys that give away software need to fund development some how (yes, I know free software blah blah...but a guy hacking code at night for the love of it is a world away from a corporation that answers to a board and shareholders).
Problem is the coders/techies may read slashdot at real but the execs who make the decission to put all that crap in don't
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
While we're listing real's faults, let us not forget the neverending updates....week after week, they rolled thru like waves on the beach.
This endless delivery could only mean they were tapping into our systems, and selling everything in sight to anyone in sight.
Now we're supposed to open the door again? Friendly faces and promises to behave? Either they've run out of things to steal and sell, or they're no better now than they were then.
Real...listen up. This time it is our turn to ignore you. Go away.
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
this parent comment and some of the child comments bring up two sides of an interesting argument, namely:
what does a software company who has lost your trust in the past have to do to regain it?
for example, i am curious to see how well the intuit tax software does this season due to last year's debacle. what would they have to do to get you to switch back?
in this case, how far would real have to go to make people interested again?
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?
It's this simple: I don't want to support any player or company that supports only proprietary formats. Supporting Real codecs means limiting my options.
I want to see content produced in standards based "open" codecs like MPEG 4, Motion JPEG,AAC, MP3, etc. When I click on a video file from the web I don't want to have to DL some specialized player, I want the player I want to launch.
When a web site requires a Real player I find another source for the video, or write the operators and ask them for another format.
Also.. you don't really understand QT if you don't mention what codec it was using. QT supports about 12 video codecs out of the box, from Apple-only ones like "Animation" to standards like "Sorenson" and "MPEG 4". Quicktime is a file and syncronization format, not a codec. It's a media wrapper.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
It was even worse than that. I think they pioneered the 'scumware' field, getting out in front of the internet revolution early. Demanding registration, hiding the free player, skinz, popups... don't get me started.. whew. I often wish microsoft had targeted them for termination before netscape, it used to be in my .sig.
That said, I'm willing to give them another chance.... in about 5 years when they have earned it by going legit and start donating to charity, and maybe even donating some to open source.
I'll believe it I see it.
#6495ED - cornflower blue
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.
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.
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)
What would Real Networks have to do to regain my trust? First of all, they need to stop talking about how they're going to regain my trust and start doing it. Talk is cheap.
Secondly they need to start distributing either a codec-only version of their software or include something entirely benign (like Media Player Classic) if they must include a player. This needs to be their PRIMARY distribution -- not something buried deep in the bowels of their site.
Third, their software needs to:
1. Assume that users ONLY want to play Real files with the included benign player and associate ONLY those extensions with said player.
2. Have no "registration" features what-so-fucking-ever.
3. Never, ever phone home.
4. Never, ever ask users if they want to upgrade or buy anything. This wouldn't be a problem with most software, but Real Networks has shown that they can't behave responsibly so I have zero tolerance for them now.
5. Always assume that the user does NOT want ANY part of it in memory unless they have manually started the program.
6. Always unload all components from memory when the user closes it. Yes, this means staying the hell out of the system tray.
7. Not include anything that could even remotely be considered advertising. For Real Networks, AOL or anything else. Again, not something that would be a big deal with most software but most software doesn't behave like RealPlayer has in the past.
All I'm asking for is a little respect -- something that MOST software gives me. Real needs to remember that their software is a guest on my hardware. They need to start ensuring that it behaves like a guest and not a fucking home invader.
Quicktime and iTunes have a very large number of problems. But at least they've never tried to embed advertisements into your playback windows.
...starts quicktime...
"Hey you downloaded the free version of our software. But you really want to pay version, right?"
not in the playback window, but still, an ad pitch.
Yes, we read these posts. Yes, we have had to build a business model on Windows that doesn't assume we can extract un fair rents from the OS. On Linux we have a new open source strategy and the codecs announced today are available to Linux users. When Linux wins Real wins since we are building the best open source linux player and selling added value services users really recommend, like Rhapsody.
Kevin Foreman
The only difference is real is actually releasing products, whereas netscape completely stopped. Mozilla != netscape, and they took years to make anything anyways
-- Patience is a virtue, but impatience is an art.
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.
Their other major problem (at least in their older players...I haven't gone past 8) is that you couldn't permanently turn off auto-update...after 30 days, it switches back on and starts screaming that YOUR PLAYER IS OUT OF DATE. IT IS TIME TO UPGRADE. OR ELSE.
Not true Kevin Foreman GM, Helix RealNetworks
Kevin Foreman
Note the "new software" is beta still. Real Just signed up thousands of beta testers at no cost!
What does donating to charity have to do with winning back your trust?
The shareholder is always right.
I'm not sure, I can't download and test them right now, but don't Real Alternative and QT Alternative just include the original copyrighted DLLs and allow MPC to hook into them? I doubt that the "author" of these programs was somehow able to reverse-engineer these codecs, so the copyrighted DLLs must be included with the packages, unauthorized by the copyright holders. Am I wrong?
I recall a friend downloading one of them and coming to that conclusion, but since I can't verify it for myself right now, I just have to ask here.
Real donates a significant amount to charity, and has matching programs for employee donations, in addition to grant programs, food drives, blood drives, etc etc. They are borderline fanatical about it.
-- Patience is a virtue, but impatience is an art.