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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?'"
I would like to write an open letter to the people of RealMedia, telling them how I disp *BUFFERING*
Setec Astronomy
Not that I would ever endorse anything from Apple, but their streaming media technology seems fairly competent.
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.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
For those who don't know already, both mplayer and xine play streaming windows media just fine on Linux/FreeBSD/etc.
Seriously though. These guys (Click and Clack) are Macheads so why not quicktime? The Quicktime streaming server fundamentals are under the Darwin open source and free paradigms, there are no licensing fees as there are with Windows, and hey, it's so easy to use. So, what gives?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Peoples problem with Real Media is not the quality of the streaming media. It is the constant barrage of advertising and popups to get you to sign up for the premium service. Microsoft may no tdo this now but once they have the market cornered they will switch to a pay for play model i'm guessing. I'm surprised that Car talk is moving away from this kind of crap when so many others are moving toward. It seems like half the online newspapers that used to be free are now a charge or register type of thing.
I would like to salute the ashes of american flags, and all the fallen leaves filling up shopping bags.
I used to like Real. Even after the debacle with the spyware in their jukebox, I was willing to give them a second chance. But I learned my lesson somewhere around G2. I was installing their latest player on my wife's Windows box, and up pops a Gator installer!
:-P
Of course it also didn't help my opinion of them that they provided my state with Maria Cantwell.
#DeleteChrome
Back when Real Media was using the adult entertainment industry to get their hold on the streaming media market, they had a special link for adult websites that made it much more obvious how to download the free player. Of course back then finding the free player link from their main page wasn't so hard either.
Divx.com is guilty of the same thing. They have a free codec package that will work fine with Windows Media Player. But it isn't in their table of their three main products. Also if you do find it, and just go with the install default config options, you'll see a Divx watermark at the start of every video. This can be turned off easy enough from the "Decoder Configuration Utility".
It's about...buffering.......time someone....buffering..buffering...realized realmedia sucks...buffering...for everything.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I can't say that I blame them. I haven't had RealPlayer on any of my PCs for ages. I went to fetch the most recent incarnation a few days ago and was completely blown away that what ought to be a relatively simple audio/video streaming client had grown to be more than 14MB.
As much as it doesn't sit well with me, Media Player is included with Windows. It requires no downloads, it doesn't bombard me with ads, and it seems to work pretty well.
Here's the main reason they likely decided to use Windows Media instead of "free" alternatives or Quicktime: The people at Car Talk want to make it easy for their listeners to tune in. They know that the majority of PCs in the world already have the Windows Media Player sitting there on the desktop waiting to be clicked, or the plugin already tied to Internet Explorer.
The transition will therefore be as seamless as possible for the listeners -- a simple matter of "click here" and the program will play. No messing around with downloading new clients, configuring, or what have you.
Whether you (open source booster) think this is right or wrong is another matter entirely.
And for that matter, to be fair to Real, the the Helix server/player/tools are also Open/Free (both Speech and Beer).
That doesn't really address the 'free Real player is harder to find than Osama Bin Laden at night' comment... Real's own employees have bitched about that for years, God knows the rest of us have. Hopefully that gives the Open movement within Real (the Helix Community) a little more leverage in selling their case to the more hardline business folk still trying to figure out why their user base is evaporating.
OTOH, I'm a bit pissed off... I have a free Real player (with all the source) that works great. Thanks Click and Clack, I can't listen to your program anymore. That 'free' windows player comes with a $200 Windows tax attached.
Nothing like a damned fool 'statement' that flies in the face of common sense.
Monty
Go here to get Real Alternative.
a ti ve.htm
It plays Real Audio crap without the need for Real's crapware.
Windows only, I do believe.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Altern
no they did not. they are still playing games.
1 2904realhome_1_3_2_1_1_1
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=0
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.
To me file types are like a langauge. They should be free and open. Could you imagine the mess we'd be in if we had to pay a fee to use the english language. Or if someone kept it hidden so that it could only be used with their translators. For the man that could patent it, it would be a gold mine.
Car Talk's technical advisor, Meg Ahertz said that the RealMedia is complete bogosity. "I tried to reason with their VP, Hugh Jass, but he redirected me to their lawyers, Dewey, Cheatham and Howe." At that point, I turned the matter over to our staff mediators, Sue First and Bernadette Bridge. The rest is history.
And it's the best show on NPR, bar none. They started offering this a month or two back, and the next week had a sample from their deluge of "thank you" letters.
Click and Clack probably haven't noticed this -- busy, as they always are, laughing at their own jokes.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
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!
Sapere aude!
Actually, they're both pretty smart.
Tom Bio
Ray's Bio
Tom had scholarships to both MIT and Harvard, worked as an engineer, got an MBA, earned a PhD, taught for several years as a professor, taught international business abroad, started his own do-it-yourself auto repair shop (very hacker like), and has a successful auto repair show. Oh, and Ray, the "stupid" one, went to MIT too.
Also, if you listen to their show, every week they have a math problem for their listeners to solve. The show is great. They're both pretty funny and the show is surprisingly entertaining. Who said gearheads are stupid?
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
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.
Why is it that when someone has an opinion that is more than one step short of outright facism in this country...blah blah blah
Hyperbolize much?
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.
Some choice quotes:
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 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:
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.
Reminds me of this:
From The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams.
On linux, there's the open-source HelixPlayer project, which has recently had a Milestone 2 preview release.
Check out Helix Player
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
One defense I will offer for our hardline business folks is that they've figured out how to keep the lights on. The fact of the matter is, we just announced that consumer revenue was 76% of our 2003q4 revenue, up from 70% the previous quarter. "Consumer revenue" is made up of subscriptions to our premium business, as opposed to systems revenue selling media servers. People assume that our business is still about media servers. So, they do get a little zealous about keeping the subscription business growing.
The thing that can't be repeated enough is that RealAudio is a supported format on Linux. Now, Linux users are forced to use jury-rigged solutions to listen to Car Talk. Very sad.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks
I have one customer who uses AutoCAD and therefore (until recently, anyway) MS-Windows. Machine A, running MS-Windows 98, plots fine. Machine B, running MS-Windows 98 (and the same versions of everything) refuses to plot to the same (LAN-connected) plotter.
AutoDesk advise upgrading to Windows ME, so B is duly upgraded, and fails, and is wiped and reinstalled, and works. Hurrah! Both machines can plot.
Management now decides to shoot for homogeneity, so upgrades to ME on A as well... and it stops plotting. Wipe and reinstall doesn't help. Wipe and revert to 98 does.
Exit one technician, stage left, screaming.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Well, the web site I could live with, seein' as you can eventually find the free link. Waste of time and lame, yes, but still... it's a one time affair.
What really got my goat when I could last be arsed to try RealOne, though, was that it was the worst annoy-ware ever. None of the obvious options seemed to convince it that
1. no, I do _not_ want it to keep pre-loading itself, and
2. no, I don't want to be spammed with their lame pop-ups... even when I'm not even watching and realmedia files any more, and have manually removed all file associations to it
It was _not_ convincing me to fork over the dough for the premium version. Au contraire, it just served to convince me that I _don't_ want to "vote with the wallet" that such lame practices continue.
Now mind you, this was some two versions back, so I don't know if they fixed it or not in the meantime. But still, it's left such a bitter taste in my mouth, that I don't want to have anything to do with them again. Ever.
And just for the sake of having a good rant, what the **** is with all these business models based on annoying the potential customer? I can understand that they need money, but then don't bloody advertise it as "FREE!!!"
The whole thing is as if I advertised "FREE MP3 players!" Only once you've got one, I started showing up at your house, reading your diary, making a list of what music you're playing, listening to your phone conversations (the non-Internet equivalent of what spyware does to a TCP/IP connection), and shouting in front of your window to give me money if you want me to shut up. Even when you're not actually using that MP3 player.
Surely noone would put up with that kind of a trick, for a non-computer product. But in the software world it's become accepted and expected that, hey, the user is a computer-illiterate anyway. You're _expected_ to sell him/her snake oil, rape his/her privacy as hard as you can, never test or debug the product first, and generally be as annoying or dishonest as possible if it makes you money. etc. How did this happen?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Slashdot is not a research facility, it's not a debtate, it's an informal discussion, and you can't come in and demand that people involved in the discussion be less biased - accept that this is the tone of the group, and if you want to, join in.
No one's forcing you to read....
content management for designers
And NO, I am not going to suggest they use Ogg - yes, it would be free, MP3s not, but I'm trying to stay on-point that WMA is bad, not muddy the issue with a format that Click and Clack may never have heard of, and certainly a large portion of their audience has not heard of.
www.eFax.com are spammers
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.
http://www.windmeadow.com/