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NPR's Car Talk Switches Back To RealAudio
taped2thedesk writes "Today, NPR's Car Talk, a 'call in talk [radio] show about car mechanics', announced they were switching back to RealAudio, after dumping it for Windows Media a few months ago. When the show switched to Windows Media, Real took notice and convinced the show to switch back, by addressing various listener complaints about their player (many of which were fixed in RealPlayer 10). The hosts say: 'We believe [Real have] made a serious and successful attempt to address those things that our listeners complained about most... They even offered to serve the audio for free online, which defrays an expense we'd otherwise have to cover.'"
so wait, we're cheering the fact they switched from one bloated media player to another bloated spyware infested media player?
I realize there are alternatives, but most people are unaware.
Mike
This is very nice, but I still wish Real would die slow and horrible death, with their marketing department who created StartCenter getting leprosy and plague and being sold into slavery and having to toil 20-hour workdays, and with children of their children being exterminated from the face of the Earth, so that any genetic knowledge that existed of StartCenter and default message preferences being selected for you right beneath the scrollable window would be erased from the face of this planet, and all the other marketers attempting even something close to this would shudder, knowing the fate of Real Networks.
...but then again, what do I expect for my tax dollars?
What a choice. DRM Whore or Spyware/Adware hijackery. That's like having to choose whether to be shot in the face or stabbed in the back.
About offering multiple streams? It's not like it will cause bandwidth problems (You're only going to be listening to one stream at a time no matter what anyway...). I dunno about liscencing fees, but I do know there are free [beer] alternatives.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Why not just put a link to a .mp3 or .ogg file.
Maybe RealPlayer 10 is crammed with Spyware(tm). I mean, if they give away the player and it doesn't blast you with ads and Real is footing the bandwidth for NPR, what's the business model?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
er...sponsorship wouldn't fix.
Hosting the show's audio for free is as good as paying the show to stay with them.
Does the current version still do this? It is not listed in the user complaints they responded to. Maybe this is the core way they make money. If so I can understand why this might be a complaint they don't want to make changes to please their users.
But some open-ness about it would be a good thing.
Or maybe they made this change a long time ago? Well, a lot of us don't hang on their every announcement...
While I personally am downloading their new software to see if they have learned their lesson, I can hardly fault others for writing this off as too little, too late.
let people choose their favorite player
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
If a mainline vendor like RealNetworks can produce a flagship product that is so close to spyware, consumers can expect rough times ahead.
It's incredible that a company should have to back down from a series of agressive marketing techniques in this way: it suggests they have either seriously misunderstood their market, or that they are under serious pressure to exploit it harder, even at a high cost in credibility.
I suspect that it will eventually become standard procedure for software to become fairly agressive in taking over the desktop, uninstalling or crippling other products, redirecting browsers, etc. The techniques currently used by the most evil spyware trojans (like CoolWebSearch) will probably become mainstream as companies look for a way, any way to keep their software visible on the users' desktops.
Or maybe I'm just being pessimistic.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I agree that something about this is setting off my spydar, but I'm still willing to give them a chance.
Granted, I don't plan on installing this anytime soon (I get my Car Talk fix on the radio - part of my Saturday morning ritual), but I'll gladly sit back and let others install it ("Tragedy is a paper cut on my finger. Comedy is when you fall down an open sewer and die" - Mel Brooks).
He took a duck to the face at 250 knots.
Someone mentioned Real Alternative a few weeks ago. It was a godsend, because I now refuse to install realplayer.
I still have my downloaded REAL PLAYER 8 installer from circa 1999, with REAL JUKEBOX. That's the only RealPlayer I install. It's great, just before the REALONE player. But I still get annoying "a new version of real player is available" messages.
Translation: Preserving our monopoly by any means necessary.
.
But I suppose dirty tactics are fair game when you're competeting with Microsoft. .
Still, I wouldn't let any Real software touch my computer with a ten-foot pole. It's disgusting how it takes over once you give it a foot in the door. I use the Real Alternative.
I'm still suprised mp3 streaming audio hasn't become more popular then Real or WindowsMedia. I have no trouble finding quality open source server software to broadcast live mp3 streams and the bandwidth usage(for me at least) is very acceptable.
:)
It annoys me that sites like NPR and Air America Radio use Real, not to mention other news sites.
Thank goodness for RealAlternative
But real audio is much friendlier to linux users than wma (Also real audio sounds better!)
ARG! MP3! OGG! Quicktime!
Why do they have to force us to use shitty proprietary players? I could give a crap about Car Talk, but there's some good shows on NPR that I WOULD love to listen to if I could, but I refuse to pollute my Windows box with RealPlayer.
Won't someone please think of the end-users?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Yeah, they're only using the de facto standard in digitized audio: they must really be out to fuck you over.
Mp3 has been a standard -- not an agreed-upon standard, but a "well, everyone can listen to it and it works well enough" standard for years; the "decision to standardize on MP3" as you put it, was made ages ago, and just about the only thing that has even come close to putting a dent in mp3 is wma's ubiquitousness and windows not including an mp3 encoder by default (ie, you have to BUY one, because windows media player won't just use LAME -- and 99% of users wouldn't know LAME's use if you explained it to them in 78-point font.)
FreeBSD for the impatient.
Only in a DRM Crazed company's wet dream is reverse engineering "pirated".
Welcome back to reality.
With closed technology, they make it harder for average joe to save the show (security through obscurity). They sell their old shows through Audible.com.
The O'Franken Factor is a joke. It'll be off the air in less than a year. Mark my words.
Let me get this straight.
1. They start working heavily with the open source community through Helix, including making a free Linux player that handles real (which, btw, is probably where the people who made the Real Alternative got the material to make the codecs).
2. They remove the bloat and ads from their software as a direct result of people's complaints. Not only that, they let you turn off all their popups. Name 3 other free closed source softwares that allow you to do that.
3. They're working with the Doom9 community, which is probably the biggest internet community about audio/video matters.
And none of this is good enough? Christ, that's as pig-headed as idiots who keep chanting that Linux is just a hobbiest server OS and will never be useful on the desktop.
For the record, I hated Real too, but since they seem to be genuinely giving it a real effort, I figured I'd give them another try. So I downloaded and installed Real 10 just now. Fiding the free download off their website was trivial -- it was in big bold blue letters on the side of their downloads page. Who would have trouble finding *that*? Yah, it's not as big as the big graphic showing their pay version, but hey, they have employees to pay. Get over it.
Install was easy -- It did ask to take over all my media files, but I just turned them off, then went into advanced, and turned on DVD playback for Real -- Real does a much better job on DVDs than WMP, for sure. Only other annoyance during install was they asked me to register. This is not unlike other media players that I use regularly, so I did. A quick click to turn off the popups from their quick-launch app, and I'm done. Not exactly the nightmare of previous Real installations.
So yeah. I can see people complaining about Real because of what they did in the past, but jesus, they're giving it an honest effort here, and remember, any time Real wins, Microsoft LOSES. =)
RealPlayer is a commercial virus. No matter how much they have changed it, no matter if they crawl across broken glass to kiss my feet and beg me, I won't ever install it again!
If my only option for a site serving streaming media is RealPlayer, I will just skip on by and not watch / listen. There are too many alternatives on the web; I can always find somethign as good or better that won't force me to install RealPlayer.
RealPlayer lost my trust a long time ago and there are too many options that are far more consumer-friendly for me to bother to give them a second chance.
Fuhgettaboutit.
Some other examples of the same principle:
'gcc reliably crashes when building this code' => there is a bug in gcc, not your code;
'my web browser crashes when viewing this page' => the fault is with the web browser, not the page;
'my computer crashes when I scroll the mouse wheel in a particular way' => the computer or operating system is faulty, not the mouse.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Maybe RealPlayer 10 is crammed with Spyware(tm). I mean, if they give away the player and it doesn't blast you with ads and Real is footing the bandwidth for NPR, what's the business model?
Could be advertising. Besides the publicity of Car Talk going back to them, it lets the Real sales guy go to other people and say "look who else uses us." When I used to help with a small local magazine, we gave certain stores free ads just so other stores would read our magazine and see that they were advertising with us. That way they felt we must know what we're doing if the other store was advertisign with ut. Competition would feel obligated to advertise to keep up with the other businesses advertising. Later, after we'd established ourselves, we could go back to the first advertisers and either cut off the free ads or at least work out some kind of deal.
Well, the concerns and responses as addressed on the cartalk website do mention not installing any software that you don't want installed.
The business model that RealNetworks is fulfilling by footing the bill for the cartalk stream is one where they generate large amounts of good karma with consumers. By getting cartalk to switch back they're going to get the invariably occuring coverage to spread the word about how good those guys over at Real are. In addition, with the cartalk site expounding the changes found in RealPlayer 10 it's showing what's changed to groups of people that were complaining in the first place and re-earning a spot on those users' hard drives for the company's software. Once they've gotten their foot in the door with cartalk listeners it snowballs into more support for a) other sites which use Real feeds and b) more support for the idea of going with Real for streaming audio when a site is confronted with having to decide what format they're going to go with.
A planet where apes evolved from men? Long live the apes.
Isn't it obvious? Subtler, quieter ads that try to convince you to buy RealPlayer Plus, Superpass, or Rhapsody (the latter of which is the only one I found even worthwhile, as it's pretty damn good at music. Think iTunes store, all of it, streamed for a flat rate. It does have the inherent downsides of streamed music, but eh). The only way they can get you to try these is if you use the program that carries it through.
There's also the sale of their Helix server, but that costs a shitload of money, and it doesn't matter if they're hosting cartalk for free.
*For you* Mozilla was the application that triggered the OS bug, that does not mean that it was Mozilla's fault. There may well have been a memory leak in Mozilla, however your report that your system crashes does absolutely nothing to help the Mozilla developers debug this. I don't mean to belittle the problem but the sad fact is that a report of 'my particular PC crashes' is of no use to the application developer, unless it's a program that does hardware access or exotic device driver access. It might, however, be helpful to the author of the operating system or device driver, who will have access to the same hardware and may be able to download the application and reproduce the crash.
I have to ask, in all the time you spent asking the Mozilla developers about this problem, did you do anything to report it to the vendor of the operating system or device drivers you are using?
"Bug in the graphics driver or Windows' graphics subsytem is rather irrelevant" - no, the bug is in the operating system. It is not irrelevant.
I'm glad that you were able to stop triggering the OS bug by changing to a newer version of Mozilla, one that is less memory-hungry. I am sure there are many bugs that were fixed in Mozilla that stopped it stressing the system so much. But this means that a chance of fixing the real, underlying bug is lost. It may still exist and be biting some other user running a different application.
You have a too low opinion of Windows 2000 and an operating system's job. If the machine crashes this indicates either faulty hardware, or faulty operating system (including device drivers). Always.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
While I agree with much of what you're saying about NPR, namely that it's a far better newsource than anything else on radio or TV right now, its liberal bent is my biggest complaint about it. That, and those Fund Drives. I'm a generous supporter (despite the fact that I disagree with their political biases), but I find that the repetitive talking during the Fund Drives drives me to turn my radio off. It really drives me up the wall. I grant it's probably necessary the way they do business right now, but I'd think they could find some way at least to allow paying users such as myself to avoid it. Perhaps they could offer a two-tier service using satellite radio or something: one free with fund drives and another where you pay some fee to listen...
Hell, I think even regular old ads would be better. I find them far less disturbing for some reason.
While I personally am downloading their new software to see if they have learned their lesson, I can hardly fault others for writing this off as too little, too late.
.... BUFFERING .....
While I admire the parent poster's fair-mindedness in giving Real another chance, I can't advise anyone else to emulate Saucepan (12098).
Why can I not? Because several versions of RealPlayer ago, I recall that Real has also claimed that they'd realized their mistakes and that their then-current version wasn't full of annoyances and spy-ware. So, trying, like the parent poster to be impartial and fair-minded, I installed that version -- only to discover that it hid anti-privacy settings deep in its settings UI, and that it attempted to phone home regardless of those settings, and that it hijacked extensions and ran unnecessary processes and in general was ill-behaved.
And on actually using it, I found that its main UI gave over as much screen real (no pun intended) estate to advertisements as to whatever I was playing, and that it wouldn't start without bombarding me with ads, and that when I actually did play any media with it, the playback quality was abysmal compared to its competitors. Oh, and
Real has claimed once too often that it has corrected its excesses for me to spend another half-hour installing it, and another week uninstalling it and resetting all the various settings it mucks with to status quo ante.
With apologies for invoking Godwin's Law, I've just finished reading William L. Shirer's The Nightmare Years: 1930-1940, in which he recounts reporting on Nazi Germany first for the Chicago Tribune and later for CBS Radio (in fact, Shirer and colleague Edward R. Murrow pretty much pioneered the format used by radio and TV news to this day, of having an "anchor" in one place with correspondents reporting in from the field).
Naturally, Shirer recounts, as does any history of that period, Adolf Hitler's various speeches, in each of which Hitler would claim his latest territorial demand would be his last: first he wanted nothing more than the Rhineland, then his claims ended with the Austria Anschluss, then absorbing the Sudetenland would settle his claims, then Danzig (Gdansk) and the Corridor, etc., etc. In each speech, Hitler would claim he was working for peace -- and that it could be attained by granting his latest -- and, he claimed, final -- demand.
Real's actions, while nothing compared to Hitler's of course, do seem to follow the same pattern: we are told that each new version is that last we will need, and that each news version "fixes" Real's anti-social and sneaky behavior. But with each new version, we find that somehow, despite Real's protestations to the contrary, the anti-social behavior remains. I'm sorry, but the little bit of content that can only be played using RealPlayer just isn't worth the aggravation -- or the chagrin of finding, on installing RealPlayer, that I've been tricked once again
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Wow, user apps can crash your OS? Sounds like you shouldn't take out your anger on Real Player just yet.
Freedom is the freedom to say that 2 + 2 = 4
If the Mozilla developer had been sitting next door to you he or she could have come over and witnessed the crash, and maybe done something (although to my mind 'something' is most likely to be sending a good report to the operating system's developer). But from halfway round the world, with only a report of 'my PC crashes when Mozilla runs', it is almost impossible to do anything. So it is understandable that they choose to focus on bug reports which show things that are definitely Mozilla bugs (whereas yours _could_ be a bug in Mozilla, but is definitely an OS bug too).
So essentially it's this assertion of 'if anybody involved had made a modest effort they would have found it' - this really is not possible when you can't reproduce the bug. In such cases, you are the only person with access to the hardware and setup that breaks, so rightly or wrongly it is down to you to make the modest effort.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Listening to Air America helped me understand one thing. All these years I though that it was the right wing assholes on talk radio that annoyed me.
Now I know that talk radio is intensly irritating, even if I agree with the politics!
Three Squirrels
I know that's the conventional wisdom about NPR, but I just don't hear it. Perhaps it's the case on PHC or some of the other weekend fare, but as for ATC and morning edition (I commute 2 hours every day) it all sounds fairly balanced to me. I don't agree with every opinion expressed, and that's how it should be. And besides, whenever a story is not presented in a completely equal way, some listener is ready to write in explaining the inequity, and then they read the letter on the air.
I guess my point is, at least they try to be fair, and are ready to air criticism if they are less than fair. I imagine if they really were so liberal, Mr. Franken et al would not feel the need to start their own left-wing radio.
Some people are complaining that Real waited too long to make the changes. It's like someone posted above (who got modded flamebait by a seething troll moderator), they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. One thing I've learned about on Slashdot: There are certain companies and individuals that people love to hate, and they will keep hating no matter what.
What are the "evils" of Real? They put icons on your desktop and other temporary, minor inconveniences. Gasp! High crimes and misdemeanors!
No, here's what you do: Pay attention to the checkboxes during the installation, and delete the desktop icons when it's done. Is that such a horrible nightmare that four years later you're still kvetching about it? I've been using RealPlayer continuously since it first came out and I haven't had any experiences that were particularly terrible. Just turn off all the annoying stuff when you first start it up, and it's fine. As for buffering problems, QuickTime is much worse than RP in my experience. In recent years, I haven't had any buffering problems at all in RP.
we are told that each new version is that last we will need, and that each news version "fixes" Real's anti-social and sneaky behavior. But with each new version, we find that somehow, despite Real's protestations to the contrary, the anti-social behavior remains.
Anti-social?? Arrgggghhhh!
GET
A
LIFE
You are being totally ridiculous. You're taking this WAY too seriously. It's just a media player!
The Nazis didn't invent lying. The Communists lied. The Trojans lied. The Egyptians lied. All in various and sundry ways. And history, in some ways, repeats itself. There is no point in relating Real, Inc. to Adolf Hitler's regime except to insinuate that they both share some extraordinary kind of evil. Your disclaimer informing us that you were not doing what you so clearly were doing was itself deceitful propaganda more worthy of association with Nazi propaganda than anything Real has done.
I don't mean to be an apologist for Real, but I feel that I must counter the mindless, compulsive bashing going on. There's a true mob mentality in here, and it's scary.