NPR's Car Talk Dumping RealMedia

olcrazypete writes: "Click and Clack are apparently fed up with Real Networks. They have switched to Windows Media Player format. 'Why? Because, for a long time, we've had tons of complaints about RealNetworks. And the one that ticks us off the most is the perceived trickery they use to sell their premium products. This is just our opinion, mind you, but it's shared by enough of our listeners, that we finally decided to take action.' The whole story is here . My favorite line: 'It stinks so much that it even makes Microsoft look good by comparison. That's something, huh?'"

Comments

Why lock in listeners?

[Gunfighter]

Switch to something a little more open minded... like Nullsoft's Shoutcast. I listen to some pretty nice UK radio stations from across the pond with KDE's Noatun whilst I code thanks to Shoutcast. I don't see any reason why its not usable for radio broadcasts like Click & Clack.

Re:Why lock in listeners?

[frantzdb]

Let them know.

Linux and FreeBSD options

[Larne]

For those who don't know already, both mplayer and xine play streaming windows media just fine on Linux/FreeBSD/etc.

Re:Linux and FreeBSD options

[Comsn]

the codec cartalk uses is Windows Media 9 Voice Decoder, which is not implemented nor easily importable into mplayer (seems mplayer is not calling the dll correctly). but have no fear, the dev's are working to get this codec in.

others who dont import the codec will see the error "Cannot find codec for audio format 0xA."

http://cartalk.cars.com/Radio/help.html used to say

Are there Windows Media Player choices for Linux? You can use MPlayer, which is free, or The CrossOver Plugin from CodeWeavers for $25.

but they took that out of the current page google cache

Re:So why not QuickTime?

[prockcore]

Not that I would ever endorse anything from Apple, but their streaming media technology seems fairly competent.

We tried to do streaming media with Darwin Streaming Server.. the problem is that you need Quicktime Pro in order to make streaming quicktimes.

Also, DSS doesn't do on-demand. It works like TV, you can't start at the beginning, you have to "tune in" to the broadcast.

As crappy as realmedia is, we can do live broadcasts, as well as let people listen in from the beginning, all with the same stream. Once we find a solution that lets us do both for relatively cheap, we'll switch.

DSS is almost there, they just need the ability to do on-demand streaming.

Never go back

[Konster]

Go here to get Real Alternative.

It plays Real Audio crap without the need for Real's crapware.

Windows only, I do believe.

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alterna ti ve.htm

Re:Real already changed the site in response to th

[joe_bruin]

no they did not. they are still playing games.

go to http://www.real.com/.
the headline reads: Introducing RealPlayer 10
subheadline: New Powerful Free
with a big image with a big, bright "Free" logo.

click on the free logo takes you here:
http://www.real.com/realplayer.html?pp=home&src=01 2904realhome_1_3_2_1_1_1

there are two big "Download Now" buttons on this site. both lead to the non-free premium player. in the margin on the right, with grey text over a grey background, there is a link to the free player.

that is bullshit. i know the free player is there, and that real plays tricks, so i specifically look for it. the average internet user, on the other hand, may not be that aware.

real are still assholes, and i am glad cartalk is moving away from their format because of their shitty tactics.

Re:Leftist Swamp?

[Graff]

Quicktime might piss them off for the same reason as Real Media does as every time you start it Apple ends up trying to get you to shell out some dineros for Quicktime Pro.

Here's a little trick that works for Mac users and may work for Windows users.

Set your system clock ahead like 10 years, then run Quicktime player. When it asks you if you want Quicktime Pro hit the "Ask me later" type of option. Then quit Quicktime Player and reset your system clock to normal.

The next time Quicktime Player will nag you about Quicktime Pro will be 10 years from now! :-)

This may be a bit off-topic

[jogie112]

But one person finds this reply useful, I'll be happy. :) There exists an alternative to downloading the horrid Real Player. Try googling "Real Alternative". It is a freely available codec that can work with any standard media player (such as Media Player Classic). Infact, I think it comes bundled with MPC. As far as I know, it works well.

Do it yourself

[NonaMyous]

You can always grab the radio signal from the ether and encode it to MP3 or whatever on your own. Here are a couple of pages on how to do this: #1, #2.

Re:Realmedia

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

You know you can download the "older" players and then just manually load the newer codecs. . . THEN DITCH THAT POS and get yourself media player classic. Runa all the codecs, has none of the adware.

Instructions on how to make RP10 less annoying

[GarfBond]

Here's a link to instructions on how to make realplayer 10 less annoying to install, posted on the doom9 forums and by a RealNetworks employee no less.

Some choice quotes:

"Previous RealPlayers and RealOne players have been impolite in certain areas (Message Center with ads, file types, icons everywhere, running in the traybar). It has been possible to make it well mannered, but it has included being forced to delete certain files to prevent the Message Center from popping up. However, regarding the "spyware" allegations, I have read that one old player did send back some usage information. That's long gone, but it's hard to be forgiven for that mistake."

Players in the past have been considered badly behaved enough, that to be frank, many computer users, from novices to experts, hate RealPlayer, and want to stay as far away as possible. Even the marketing people have started to understand this, and RP 10 is one good step in the right direction of behaving nicer, but it may not be enough, considering how bad the reputation is (yes, we do get the feedback, us developers more than the marketeers, since chances are higher we read the tech forums).

Re:Why not just use MP3?

[ajlitt]

Because they sell archives through Audible. Using a streaming format with DRM at least provides some ass-coverage against redistribution. Remember, Car Talk is not free-as-in-beer. Your local NPR affiliate pays a hefty chunk of change for Car Talk, All Things Considered, and other radio shows you all take for granted.

But mplayer doesn't work with this codec!?

[swatter]

OK, the majority is generally happy that RealAudio has been ditched. Great, I dislike the spyware-ridden load of crap too -- so I used mplayer like all sane people. Now they switch to WMA9. Not sure why they didn't go with a format that isn't open, but whatever, mplayer will handle it...

But no: "Cannot find codec for audio format 0xA" and mplayer bails. Many hours of googling, trolling mplayer-dev/user and all I can come up with is:

a number of others having the same problem,

an offhanded redirect to the mplayer FAQ (which, while an interesting read, doesn't actually address this problem),

a dated discussion about how MS had made life very difficult for developers to hook into the WMA9 dlls as they had in the past,

and a story from a ripe.org admin who had concluded that WMA9 streaming audio could not be decoded by a non-MS player and had switched to the older WMA8 audio codec instead.

I've got MPlayer 1.0pre3, and /usr/lib/win32/wma9dmod.dll (along with the rest of the "essential.tar.bz2" codecs) from the mplayer web site.

If someone has *actually* listened to a wma CarTalk feed and can tell me where to find the magic codec I will be a very happy camper. I will even accept a necessary minimum of abuse for not finding the solution on my own.

Re:Isn't there an open source player based on Heli

[rgammon_real]

On linux, there's the open-source HelixPlayer project, which has recently had a Milestone 2 preview release.

Format wins for Microsoft

[robla]

...are just that: wins for Microsoft.

I'm not going to be an apologist for RealNetworks past actions. RealNetworks is a big enough company, that Jamie Zawinski's quote "[G]reat things are accomplished by small groups of people who are driven, who have unity of purpose. The more people involved, the slower and stupider their union is." I'll admit we've done slow and stupid things. However, there are certain things that can only be done by big companies, no matter how slow and stupid, which is why I haven't written a similar rant.

However, I'd like to point out that, in the "slow and stupid" vein, we're slowly getting better. The RealPlayer 10 beta isn't perfect, but it's better, and I imagine that things will be better in the final release.

Moreover, we've got a lot of really great things going on in the Helix Community. We've got the Helix Player for Linux, which just the won Best Open Source Project award at LinuxWorld. That means that if there's something that annoys you about it, you can fix it. It's based on Gtk, and the engine code is all cross-platform, so someone could theoretically port it to Windows even.

So, we're trying. I'm hoping that folks could cut us a little slack. I'm hoping that the Linux folks out there could help us change Car Talk's mind, since Windows Media is a pretty Linux-hostile format.

Thanks
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks

Re:Realmedia

[achurch]

Maybe there will be an open surce equivalent soon that will let you write the whole godam stream to a file before it even starts playing.

mplayer -ovc copy -oac copy -o foo.avi rtsp://whatever

(And what does "disp" mean? News about English slang is tragically lacking over here in the land of the rising sun . . .)

Re:Realmedia

[Ravadill]

Actually I think he's referring to the excellent "Media Player Classic" a GPL "re-write" of mplayer2, it has all of features that the original did (small size, clean interface) and a heap of extra's such as Realmedia/Quicktime and even flash playback support using the IE plugin controls. http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/

Re:Realmedia

[dnoyeb]

I think though that real has lots of issue.

1. its HARD to find the free player. They keep saying "free player here" but then nothing be for sale ones show up, then you find the little link hidden in the corner somewhere.

2. they want email for download. I know you can enter a fake one. But I get tired of it all.

3. They will install loads of *extra* garbage that MS wont. (Or MS is much better and covert-ops)

4. It will take you weeks to learn all the tons of things you need to turn off to keep that thing from harrassing you.

5. if you don't register, it keeps asking you each time you try to play a file. You get choice OK-Cancel (among other issues) which implies either register, or don't play. Quicken does the same horrible thing with their update feature...

I used to like realplayer better than MS. But if they are going to be equally as corrupt, I'll stick with MS since I already have it :D Real player was always better on the mp3s though.

Re:Shoutcast open? Try Icecast or Helix.

[bear_phillips]

Except it is illegal to use the wma codecs unless you have a paid copy of windows. So ya I can listen to car talk with linux, but that means the FBI will probably be beating down my door.