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100% Open Source Helix Player 'Alpha' Available

Posted by timothy on from the but-does-it-play-ogg dept.

kforeman (Kevin Foreman, Helix GM at RealNetworks) writes "Helix Player 1.0 and RealPlayer 10 Alpha are now available. The Helix Player is 100% open source, and includes support for Ogg Vorbis and Theora, as well as SMIL 2.0 so that you can combine Theora videos with JPEG, GIF, or PNG images and RealText. The RealPlayer 10 alpha is a superset of the Helix Player alpha, and adds support for RealAudio, RealVideo, MP3, and Flash. See the release notes to find out about the rest of the enhancements and give the players a whirl. We love your feedback and comments as always, so use any avenue you are comfortable with (forums, email, bugzilla) and let us know what you think! The team has tried hard to get all the bad bugs out, but remember that it's alpha and constantly improving with your feedback and help. Enjoy the player!"

6 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. Standalone players ... by ciupman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... are neat, but i like media frameworks better. I 'm eagerly waiting for a final (stable api) gtreamer

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    I fuse with Mercer every single day...
  2. No windows port... by arduous · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So it looks like I will be sticking with Real Alternative

    Why do some many open source developers limit their program to just the linux world? On my main workstation (XP box - don't work, I have linux servers just about everywhere), I have Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, FileZilla, Nvu, OpenOffice, VideoLAN, GAIM, Dev C++, and many more.

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    "It's the smell! If there is such a thing." Agent Smith - The Matrix
  3. Codename HXPlayer? by Quai · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In the about-dialog on the realplayer its named "About hxplayer" :P

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  4. Install the RPM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you install the RPM it automatically enables the plugin in Mozilla which works great on sites like News.com, MTV.com, and BBC.co.uk. This is the first time I've been able to view streaming content from these sites in Linux without numerous problems. I think a big congrats is in order to the Helix community who do offer the 100% free Helix player for download. It is only RealPlayer which contains the proprietary components. I see a lot of people bitching here who are obviously uninformed. Anyway, congrats to Helix, hurray streaming media on Linux!

  5. Re:thanks for nothing by ajs318 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Back in the DOS days there was a programme called "DEBUG" which took a binary file as its input and displayed the corresponding assembly language source. You had to do a lot of guesswork; but when you had written Spectrum machine code using no programming aid more sophisticated than the character chart in the back of the manual, that wasn't as bad as it sounds. Surely a binary-only codec could be probed with something similar?

    Extended disclaimer, for the paranoid: Pentium assembly language isn't a secret, reverse engineering for the purpose of creating interoperable products is explicitly permitted, and it's never illegal to decrypt something if you can prove you are the intended recipient.

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  6. Re:Once a-f*cking-gain: by BenBenBen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd say that a program that installs itself and runs constantly without my asking it to, that can't be disabled or stopped from within itself, and which includes a built-in SMTP engine for mailing out stuff to HQ counts as Spyware.

    Maybe we just have differing definitions.

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