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?
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
I'll just stick to RealAlternative, thanks.
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.
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?
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.
Regarding the opt-out issues, Real's biggest problem was not so much that most of the items were opt-out, but that they hid the real opt-out items in a scrollable form where the visible options on the top were already unchecked. Unless you paid attention and made sure you scrolled through all the options, you may think you were opting out because everything you could see was unchecked, but there were 9 or 10 more nasty items checked below that.
The takeover issue is another big problem, which neither WMP nor Winamp have. Overall, Real has honestly earned their terrible reputation, and I for one will never trust them. Goodbye, Real.
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?
> But what do you suggest Real do?
1. No spyware, adware, scumware, malware. Ads are acceptable, although I don't get ads with other players.
2. Don't take over any formats except RealMedia files (since I can watch other media just fine without ads in Media Player).
3. NO TRAY ICONS, and don't bury the location for disabling in a different spot it with every new release.
4. No bloatware.
If you don't meet ALL of the above, I'll use a player that does. Sell services and and streaming products, not ads! I don't mind the occasional non-annoying commercial in your Internet Radio or Internet TV stations (like many Shoutcast stations do now). If the commercial is annoying, I change the channel.
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.
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.
Actually, Quicktime is great because of its file associations. I installed it and it, by default, associated all MIDI files to itself even though it lacked the required plug-in to actually play MIDI files. No more annoying music coming from any of my browsers besides what's in my playlist!
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
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.
Thank you for your encouraging words. We are and will continue to build the world's best media players on Linux and other OS's including Windows.
Kevin Foreman
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.
Then read this:
enough already. I went to real.com and I couldn't find a download link that didn't require an account (creditcard info - cancel within 14 days OR ELSE).
On a hunch I clicked on service (it's your core business, not some cuddly extra!) and there I could download realplayer 10. Of course, a crappy installer which first decompresses files ("preparing to install") which later need to be decompressed, but that's about standard on windows. So the installer finally pops up with a license agreement. Pretty preposterous terms, including "delete this in 120 days" and "we can revoke your license with 14 days notice" bullshit, and that's even disregarding whole sections on DRM and autoupdates. Not very open-sourcy!
Then I have to remove checks from checkboxes because you want to give me a zillion shortcuts (including Free Offers? v.iagra?)..
Then it won't let me unselect all filetypes except real, unless I click advanced.. Sure, that's not pushy AT ALL..
Then a fucking toolbar.. Then I have to creat an account?? WTF?? fake@example.com is already registered, damn it.. Then another ad.
Only NOW do I get the UI of real player itself. And another ad! Close it down, start it again. Another ad (realguide)!
I notice MessageCenter (SPAM) is still there, and enabled by default. Fucking spamware.
MediaPlayerClassic install: download. Run. If I like it, register the filetypes in the options menu (perhaps a bit leet for newbies, but doable).
No bloat. No ads. No built-in spammy shortcuts. No stealthily installed and enabled popup ads. No non-standard confusing and icky looking non-themed widgets. A tenth the size. Just add codecs. Give Mplayerc.exe and a decent codec pack and three lines of instructions to my mom, et voila, even she can install it.
MediaPlayerClassic is GNU GPL. How about real patch it up with some real streaming, release some codec, and ok, make an installer for it (a NON-hijacking one).
The ONLY thing I like about this realplayer is the page with a lot of radio stations (kind of like shoutcast, AHEM).. The thing I don't like is it loading some stupid webpage when I click on a live365 feed (with NO warning).
Even windows media player and iTunes are better behaved than Real, and the open source players beat it hands down for being polite and respectful.
And you sir, lured me into downloading a spammy ad-laden piece of hijacking crap under the pretense that it was finally cleaned up. I'm not calling you a liar, but I was mislead by statements you represented as factual truths, which are not.
That's me (and anyone who listens to me) done installing anything from Real.com for the next five years, unless I hear from 3 independent parties that it doesn't suck anymore.