Slashdot Mirror
Real Announces Helix Grant Winners
elaineg writes "We're happy to announce the 2003 Helix Community Grant Program winners for development of open source projects on Helix. They are to UC Santa
Barbara for providing
robust multicast support in Helix, the Justin Karneges and Ulrich
Staudinger at the Jabber Foundation for Jabber/Helix integration,
Robert Kaye at MusicBrainz for integrated metadata
cleanup in the Helix DNA Client, Jesse Schell at Carnegie Mellon
University for integrating
the Panda3D game and simulation engine with Helix, and the Xiph.org
Foundation for further R&D and
support of Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora codecs, including Helix DNA
platform integration. More details can be found in the press
release. Also, in vaguely related news, we've released Milestone 2 of the
Helix Player for Linux." Helix styles itself as "the first open multi-format platform for digital media creation, delivery and playback", and has been created by Real Networks.
That Org Vorbiss R&D is given an award. Its a good format IMO
http://www.beyourowneviloverlord.tk
http://www.frozenchickenthrowing.tk
http://www.killercamel.tk
...about the prevailing consensus about Real on /.
/. article about the launch of the Helix player contest.
By the way, here's the
If this one is anything to go by it looks like they may have created something better than the old players from hell.
Simply a menu bar, a playback area and some control buttons. Lovely.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The only important parts of realmedia are the realaudio and realvideo codecs which as far as I know are proprietary. All attempts to integrate open formats like Vorbis into realplayer are only helping spread the disease. Why does anyone think it's interesting? Until the realaudio and realvideo formats are opened, integrating those other formats is just helping Realmedia Corp. co-opt the open formats.
Does this mean I'll still have to pay the $1,995 price tag?
Aaww well yes, they do suck, but I also remember a time when they were the only maker of serious software to play video on Linux, and I was really grateful to be able to play realaudio and realvideo files on my then badly supported pet OS.
...
I guess it's like a moped : when you're a kid, you feel the biggest guy in town on your little buzzing machine, then you get your driver's license and your first car, and your hate the thing for taking up so much space in the garage and stinking the place up with that awful gasoline stench. But remember you once liked it though
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Here is the direct link for the download!
1 _1_2.ecomm...R/forms.real.com/real/realone/realone .html?beta_bypass=true&bbits=true&type=dlrhap_bb&& pp=home&src=012004realhome_1_1_2_1_1_2
http://forms.helixcommunity.org/helixdnaclient/
Here is a quick tutorial on making an rpm of it.
http://fedoranews.org/tchung/helixplayer/
And since there is no Windows version of the HelixPlayer, here is the link to the RealOne Player:
http://www.realone.com/R/RC.012004realhome_1_1_2_
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
...must have something up their sleeve. Everything Real has ever done has been user-hostile, with the express aim of taking control of your computer away from you.
Without some absurdly good justification (a new board of directors with Mother Theresa as chairperson?), I can't believe that Real would do anything "open" without an ulterior motive.
As yet, there is no Windows version of the Helix player. You are either lying, or mistaken.
You seem to be saying that getting Realmedia to adopt open formats is a bad thing?
Sure, we'd all like all the codecs to be open but in the meantime proprietary+open is better than proprietary alone. Pre-existing proprietary codecs are never going to be opened. Whatever they or we want sorting out all the patents and licences to do so would be an unbelievable amount of effort. You can't just "undo" proprietary development like that.
What we can do however is help Realmedia see the value of Open formats here and now. We can't change their history but we can try and guide their future.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I think the link to the windows Real One player should be a *hint* to everyone about what this company is about.. Note: the link is NOT http://realone.com/download/realoneplayer_free.exe
but rather a game to trick the average person into going somewhere they did not want to go.
Does anyone think all the recent PR on slashdot in favor of Real (including quotes about having changed their ways and favorable comments from Helix community) is that much different from the clicky trickery just to download the player? It's just more of the same "try our great new player".. You just wait for the other RealOne(TM) shoe to drop.
I'm beginning to think Xiph may fade and disappear at this rate. The Theora mailing lists appear to be dead, there've been no 'Ogg Traffic' updates for a couple of months, and Theora's still at "Alpha 2" half-a-year after it was originally scheduled to be "finished"....
I'd played with the alphas and liked the video and sound quality. Seemed like a really promising format, so hopefully they won't let Theora languish and will use some of the grant money to get back to work on it, but I wouldn't hold my breath...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Free.
I'm sure there's a windows counterpart.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
The referenced "direct download" link is for the nightly builds of the helix player. The release MS2 build can be downloaded from here
(You must register on helixcommunity.org and click through the binary eula to get access to it)
The main page for the player project is at: https://player.helixcommunity.org/
From there, you can access the web forums, mailing lists, and issue tracker.
Check out Helix Player
It plays almost everything I need it to play. As of pre3 the exception seems to be realaudio streams (which play but seem to lose sync after a while). I'm sure that'll be sorted out before long though - props to the developers!
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Ok, I understand what you were downloading. Splay and helixplay are "sample" applications. They are provided with the Helix DNA client source to provide developers with examples of how to work with client core. I thought your were talking about the GTK Linux player (http://player.helixcommunity.org), which has not been ported to Windows.
Look- everybody knows Real's mass market players have been horrible for quite some time. However, whenever anybody mentions Helix on /., any rational discussion is drowned out by a horde of people who haven't looked into Helix at all but want to get in their "R3AL I5 T3H 5UX0RZ!" me-too comment. Helix looks like a really solid effort, and the linux player is rather nice. Hopefully management will let them release a Windows port of the helix player as they intend to do.
This may be naive, but, can Helix be compiled for Yellow Dog Linux on Mac hardware?
This is the Constitution.This is the Constitution under the Bush administration. Any questions?
Real is hideous spyware, bloatware and crapware; the most recent version is worse than ever:
2 41 90-2004Jan17.html
p _id=82303&package_id=84358
- au dio/record-streaming-video-real-video.htm
e am /all-streaming-video-recording-software.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A
Instead, use these tools if Real Media is all that is available:
Player: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?grou
Capture and convert to AVI: Use Real 7ime, more about it here:
http://emoney.al.ru/capture-streaming-video-and
And if you want to see all the options for capturing streaming media:
http://all-streaming-media.com/record-video-str
FUCK REAL by any and all means possible.
Well, I prefer spending my time to develop applications using gstreamer and feeding the gstreamer's bugzilla.
I've seen some mail about helix on the gstreamer and on the matroska dev list.
It's very interesting, because the only thing that helix folks can say is : "Helix is really better because we have the best codec ever made : RV9. And if you join Helix, you can build a player that play RV9 file. If you don't join Helix, your player will suxx because it will not be able to play proprietary encoded RV9 videos and RV9 is the best codec that everybody will be using."
I maybe wrong because my english is not perfect. I hope to be wrong... If not, please forget helix. it's disgusting...
Ploum.net.
Do you know what DR5 is and how it differs from MS2?
DR5 (Developer Release 5) is a September 22, 2003 release of the client sample players, splay (no gui -- video window only), and helixplay (cross platform basic gui, uses motif on linux).
It does not include the hxplay, the gtk-based linux player.
You should register on helixcommunity.org, as that gives you access to the web support forums, mailing lists, and issue tracker.
But, if you insist on using a build from the nightly builds download page, your best bet would be Table "Tarball for 01/15/04", row "linux-2.2-libc6-gcc32-i586" column "HelixPlayer"
Check out Helix Player
I'm totally lost here, I've registered all agreed to two seperate licenses but I can't find the source to M2. A little help here.
windows version: http://forms.helixcommunity.org/helixdnaclient/ind ex.html?filename=20040121/all_clients-helix-200401 21-win32-i386-vc6.zip
This is not the same helix player as the linux helix player. These are more basic test clients that are samples for developers working with the helix core.
Check out Helix Player
Good to see (former) TI Programmers making it big. First Jimmy Mardel wins the Google Code Jam, now Justin.
For those that don't know, Justin Karneges created the Joltima RPG for the z80 processor based TI Calculators. He also worked with his company Affinix to create Joltima II (Infinity) for the Gameboy Color... unfortunately, they couldn't find a publisher, and by the time they did... the Gameboy Advance was released and they pretty much lost all hope.
Personally, I'd still buy their game... looks like one of the best RPGs ever made for a portable.
If there's any third party IP in there then relicencing becomes a complete nightmare. The codecs suffer from this fate.
You might recall a similar problem being faced with Mozilla. Stuff like the spell checker couldn't be opened and had to be left out of Mozilla and made available as a proprietary plugin by Netscape. With any luck over time the Open parts of the product will grow so as to render the closed parts into legacy. But that will take time. There is no magic wand that can change the past.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Best Open Source Project:
e leaseNotes
Company: RealNetworks, Inc.
Product: The Helix Player Project in the Helix Community
Check out the Helix Player at https://player.helixcommunity.org/2004/draft/MS2R
Kevin Foreman
Subject sez it all. Although I must admit the build system on PPC requires a minor bit of chainsawing, and there's some trouble with gcc 3.3 due to gcc de-supporting varargs....
Monty
It looks to me like this helix thing is like what they were trying to do in the movie Antitrust. A stream to anything media distribution system. From what i read at the helix community site this could be the bassis for something like that. If i'm completely wrong and way off base please say so. It sounds interesting.
Well, I finally managed to get this new release to play mp3 and ogg files.. But it will not play anything else.. no mpg, rm, etc.. I am really dissapointed with this product so far.
serious inquiries only.
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
I manage the Helix Community Grant Program, and am really looking forward to working with the grant recipient choices. However, I am part of a larger team that's trying to effect change w/in Real... part of this effort is sharing the Slashdot community's thoughts with the exec team. Constructive comments are easier to convey than cranky responses about past perceptions. Help us out! We want to build products & release code that is for the greater good. With your support we can make this happen. Start here: what do you think about our Grant Recipient choices? Have you checked out the Helix Player project, or other projects in the Helix community?, Please advise...
Just a small comment, though most people know real from the realplayer and helixserver, Real is primarily a content-broker. Their players support their business to buy and sell content to the likes of BT and DT. To me it therefore seems that want to move (part) the SW business (the development of which is a cost-centre) to the outside world, thereby increasing their overall operating margins.
I think this is a smart way to work (from a business point of view) but ethically questionable.
brrrrrr it's cold
As a Linux desktop user myself, I'm really keen on making the Linux desktop commercially viable; something that our primary commercial competitors don't have a lot of motivation to do. Hopefully, we can complement the existing enthusiast-driven open source efforts with commercially-attractive (supported, OEMed, blah blah) software, making the platform as a whole far more attractive.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
"So what?" Who needs Realmedia? There's a new, open-source player? So what? It might be useful for viewing the decaying Real content still out there on the net, but why should we promote the continued use of this crap?
What cross-platform content format would you suggest then? WMV is not an option due to it being windows-only (there's a mac version, but it's been discontinued). Quicktime has no linux version (though you can get it to run through crossover, but performance in that case of horrible). All the other formats are either not available on all platforms, unsuitable for streaming, or too difficult to get running.
Like it or not, in the real world, rm is the ONLY format that will easily play on all the major platforms.
Maybe if ogg theora or ogg tarkin ever get off the ground that will change, but given how ogg vorbis is still a niche player, despite it being a clearly superior and completely open/free format that has been out for quite a while, this seems incredibly unlikely.
Yes - RealPlayer has always been free, and versions for Linux/UNIX, Mac, Windows, and Mobile devices here.
Keep the codecs closed source but allow their use for decoding Real-encoded content to other formats.
Last time I checked, this was explicitly not allowed by the license, which makes me suspect that the stuff about not owning all the IP is just a convenient smokescreen.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Note: the link is NOT http://realone.com/download/realoneplayer_free.exe but rather a game to trick the average person into going somewhere they did not want to go.
I've put up with some pretty crappy tricks from Real Networks over the years, but sneaking goatse and tubgirl links in to their employee's Slashdot posts is the absolute limit!
What "clicky trickery"? Clicking on the "Free RealPlayer" link gives you an instant download.
Sure, their past leaves much to be desired, but, at the very least, do not propigate no longer true facts.
Correction: Sorry, couldn't cancel the prior post, and didn't catch it on preview.
And this means you should be trusted because?
The player being open should mean that it will be very difficult for spyware to be snuck into it. So that's a plus. And I understand that you have abundant business reasons to maintain a monopoly over the server...damn, there's that word.
I find it quite difficult to trust a monopoly, even in a small niche. There've been just too many examples of monopoly positions being abused. (Like every one I've heard of that's been looked at closely.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.