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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.'"
From Real: We think our new RealPlayer 10 is, beyond a doubt, our friendliest and best player yet.
Nice to know that I can listen to Click and Clack on my computer without being constantly bombarded with pop-ups from a piece of annoyware.
Oh wait, I've been doing that for weeks thanks to Real Alternative. All the joy of streaming audio without Real's player.
It sounds like Car Talk's Complaint Line Operator, Xavier Breath, earned his paycheck this week.
Wow. First Microsoft adds a project to Sourceforge and now Real has admitted that not everyone likes being bombarded by pushy bookmarks and shortcuts of unusual size. What next? SCO admiting that maybe they didn't invent sliced bread?
Seriously though, I'm glad to see that Tom and Ray gave Real a second chance. If it's true that they is dedicated to responding to customer's complaints then this is a good thing for everyone.
He took a duck to the face at 250 knots.
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.
I liked Real Audio streams back when the Real Audio plugin was an embedded object in the webpage. Same holds true for windows media. I consider this to be a step in the WRONG direction... I dont want a whole app suite firing up, spamming me, just to listen to some audio. My Rant is done.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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.
If you need a test station may I suggest O'Franken Factor
Help fight continental drift.
The current week's show is available here.
I know the site used to have archived "favorites" of many, many shows when it was hosted by cars.com. However, I don't see the favorite clips listed anymore...
I subscribe to Liverpool Football Club's liverpoolfc.tv service that provides live streaming audio of all of Liverpool's football (soccer) matches. Based on "user complaints", they switched to Windows Media streaming audio feeds from Real Audio for the first time this weekend. If user comments are any indication, this was a complete failure. Admittedly this was the first major test, but the performance was extremely poor, the audio cut out frequently and the quality of the feed was much poorer than I'm used to.i ng-I-do software packaging as much as the next person, but I think its well worth it for the superior experience you now get with it. And the improvements since Real 6.0 with its leak-buckets-of-memory-and-crash-Windows issues is significant.
I hate the Real bundle-of-everything-I-don't-want-with-the-one-th
On the other hand, Real's reason to exist is streaming media....and admittedly, they had a headstart over the others. But is it really feasible for them to survive based solely on RealServer software sales? I don't think any reasonably sane/not abnoxiously rich person would subscibe to their "Real Gold Superpass" etc.
I think that's why they were pushing on advertising, popups and spyware with such fervor - that's about the only means of income and existence they have left - without a reliable business plan.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
But the real reason is they got free hosting from Real.
;)
And they even offered to serve the audio for free online, which defrays an expense we'd otherwise have to cover.
We're in no position to ever turn down generosity, no matter how misguided. So, we took them up on their offer, before they could reconsider.
Also they mentioned the "Hidden" free player problem. I mentioned it awhile back on slashdot but the trolls came out and said "Its right there!!!" Well, looks even Real admited the free version was hard to find.
On the issue of the "hidden" free player, they've agreed to provide a direct link from Car Talk to a clear, uncluttered, free player download page. On the issue of pop ups, they tell us they're gone.
I hate to say this, but after staying far, far away from Realplayer for years (I don't think I've used it since 1999), I finally found something I really, really wanted to listen to online that was RealPlayer only. All the alternatives to RealPlayer seemed like too much of a pain to set up (I'm extraordinarily lazy), so I decided, against my better judgment, to give the new player a download and see how it worked.
It's actually really not bad at all. The install is fairly short and lets you pick your media types, what shortcuts to install, etc. and unlike old versions of RealPlayer doesn't just DO IT ANYWAY. ("Would you like your homepage changed to real.com?" "No." "Homepage changed!") It doesn't ask for some obnoxious registration, load itself into my start bar, or do any of that other "helpful" BS that made the old RealPlayer such a dog.
So far it seems to be a small little player that does what it does, and nothing you don't want. Since I still don't really trust Real, I'm waiting for some popup to come up, or wake up one day and find "RealConsole RAM-Fucker Pro" installed on my desktop or something, but so far, nothing.
But for now, it just plays Realaudio files. What a novel concept for an application. It's actually been pleasant to use. (RealVideo still sucks, though.)
Between Real cleaning up their program and M$ putting out opensource, Im going to stock up on blankets- hell should be freezing over shortly.
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...
This made me wonder if they even considered going to Ogg Vorbis streaming with Icecast. Whether they considered it or not, it made me wonder how many Icecast streams are available.
I found a list here:
http://www.icecast.org/streamlist.php
Not as many as I had hoped to find.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
https://player.helixcommunity.org/
Downloads are available here:
MS2.1 had problems playing back non-realaudio/realvideo datatypes -- if you need these, M2 is a better bet.
Nightly builds are also available -- see the player webpage for details.
Check out Helix Player
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 understand (and sometimes make) the argument that "gratis" doesn't always mean "cheap", since someone has to run the system and in this setting you'd probably have to pay them to do it. Still, the whole reason I love listening to these guys so much is that they are the alpha geeks of the automotive mechanic world. It's not like Tom and Ray are a couple of guys who tinker with cars in their back yard and have no technology background.
Real Player doesn't come with Windows XP, so you can't use the argument that you don't want to make your users install additional software, since they'll have to anyway. The official answer from NPR is that
although I'm not quite ready to believe that compressing to Real or WMA format is less costly that compressing to Vorbis.Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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
An old radio, a sound card, and a few shell scripts -- that's all it takes.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
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.
Pros
The worst ad's are sponsorship recognition
You learn something new every day
You become more liberal every day
No spyware
Supported by most AM/FM radios
Better news coverage than Fox News
Less Hollywood gossip induced brain atrophy
None of that [BUFFERING....] [97%][BUFFERING...] crap!
Cons
You still have to listen to the registration notice [Fund Drive] twice a year, even after you've paid the annual support fee! :)
Friends look at you funny when every other sentance starts with "I heard on NPR that..."
Screw you ClearChannel, we don't need that poppy Britney, Timberlake, OMG WTF Celeb shit, or the 57 Minute Non-stop Commercial MegaMixes!! Get your spam off of my radio
Sorry for the rant, Car Talk rulez, keep it real Click & Clack!
-- In Soviet Russia, radio listens to YOU!
I suspect it may have been their Chief Legal Counsel, Hugh Louis Dewey of Dewey, Cheetham & Howe.
This is an excellent site for problems like realplayer
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
Egon: It would be bad.
Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good-bad thing. Whattya mean "bad?"
Egon: Try to imagine all media players as you set them up stopping instantaneously and every file association on your computer exploding at the speed of light.
Ray: Total protonic reversal....
Venkman: Right, that's bad...OK.. important safety tip. Thanks, Slashdot.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
So I was like EVERYBODY else. I hated Realone...I hated the ads...I hated the fact that it felt like they were trying to "sneak spyware" onto my computer.
So I tried Real 10. So far...no crashes, and if you disable the browser feature it's JUST AS FAST AS REAL 8...and for any of you that ACTUALLY have an open mind and want to try it, here is information from the Helix community forums on how to optimize Real 10.
>
>
> I work for RealNetworks, and I am the first to admit RealPlayer is not my favorite media player. For video, Media Player Classic (MPC) is, and yes, I use MPC to play my RV9-EHQ aka RV10 content.
>
> Previous RealPlayers have been pretty impolite to put it mildly, and along with so many other computer users, I have been ticked off by its behaviour in many ways. It has been possible to make it well mannered, but it has included being forced to delete certain files to prevent that annoying Message Center. However, it has not been spyware in a long time, even though one old player did send back some usage information. That's long gone, but it's hard to be forgiven for that mistake.
>
> Considering how past players have created such a bad reputation, this post is probably futile, but anyway... Thanks to those few positive posts though, especially for the Linux and OS X players. It is nice to see someone taking the time to give it a another chance.
>
> This RealPlayer 10 is better than before, it is fast, small, and does not run +10MB services in the background, like one well known example, name withheld. However, this post is not really about performance, even though a lot could be said about improvements in this area. More importantly in this discussion, it is also better in terms of its behaviour, albeit less better than me, many of my co-workers, and all of you, had hoped for.
>
> Here's what you need to do when installing:
>
> * Choose Custom Install
> * Uncheck all the boxes you don't like for stuff on the desktop and quicklaunch bar. There is nothing hidden by a scroll bar, at least not with my computer screen size.
> * Check only the media types you want it to play. This is the only time you will be asked this, it will never try to take back any media types. Now, is this really so bad compared to other software, in regards to media types? It's not as polite as MPC, but I have other media players which take over media types, and there is not even an option to customize this..
> * Start RealPlayer, you may have to create an account. Everybody hates this, and wish it would go way. Agreed, but RealNetworks has to make money somehow, and the number of users is a needed measure to document. So use fake information if you like.
> * Then go to Tools->Preferences->Automatic Services, Click Configure Message Center, then uncheck "Check for new messages". Click OK on the "warning" that comes up. Now you will never be bothered by the Message Center. In previous versions, you could not disable the Message Center completely, without deleting certain files. Minor improvement, it's still opt-out, but at least it's possible. Check or uncheck Auto-update in its sub-menu as well.
> * Go to Tools->Preferences->General and set On startup display to "Player only". That way, no browser, and it starts much quicker.
>
> So to summarize, a few clicks are needed to opt-out, you have to "sign in" the first time. Yes, somewhat annoying, but that's about it. It could have been better, but compared to many other examples, it's not that terrible. Since it has been so very bad in the past though, it clearly should have changed more to make a shining example, but since it is RealNetworks' main vehicle for generating revenue, there is a lot of nervousness about changing things too quickly.
>
> Download the free RealPlayer 10 Beta here, with no re-direction or sales tricks:
>
> http://www.real.com/freeplayer/?rppr=slashdot [real.com]
>
> A
*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
The Car Talk guys own a garage in Cambridge, MA, and that is where I had my car serviced when I was a grad student at (I shall not speak the name of the evil institution).
The guys in the shop were not what you usually expect a mechanic to be. What I saw in those guys was the same thing I see in my propeller-headed software engineer colleagues. They were car hackers.
The most interesting visual in my memory was the heavy bearded guy welding a muffler with safety glasses on his face (i.e. no face mask) and a cigar hanging out of his mouth, talking about the physics of engine compression and how it is related to the exhaust system.
My friend got a voice-activated car radio.
You say "Rock", you get the rock station.
You say "Country", you get the redneck station.
You say "Classical", you get Beethoven and friends.
The other day, he was driving around and two kids ran right out in front of his car.
He screamed "Fucking Kids!"
The radio started playing Michael Jackson...