Slashdot Mirror
Helix Player and RealPlayer 10 Released
kforeman writes "The RealPlayer 10 for Linux and its underlying 100% open source Helix Player are now both finalized. The RealPlayer 10 for Linux has many new features including a Mozilla plug-in, so you can now enjoy all those embedded media clips, as well as the latest RealAudio 10, RealVideo 10, MP3, Flash, and Ogg Vorbis and Theora support. The Helix Player is 100% open source, (now including the GPL!) and includes support for SMIL 2.0 and open source codecs Ogg Vorbis and Theora. Our goal is to make the Linux desktop a first class citizen and we think today's releases are a good first step in that direction."
Thats...buffering buffering...great!
Slashdot uses Slashcode running on Apache with a MySQL backend. All of these packages are OPEN SOURCE, and therefore the odds of errors occurring are VIRTUALLY ZERO! On top of the impecable software, this site is maintained like a finely tuned machine by some of the most brilliant administrators and programmers the human race has to offer! I'm sick of these rumors about server errors! THEY ARE LIES!
Anyone else get a "Nothing to see here. Move along." notice? That was sooooo weird!
I hope to play with this later.
Could this be the beginning of a multimedia framework for GNU/Linux?
Join the Free Software Foundation
Does this mean Real will release how it hacked into iTunes/iPod?
Now I don't have to use that pesky, non-intrusive, non-commerical, non-irritating, non-email-address-asking Xine!
AccountKiller
Who needs the real Realplayer anyway? I mean, seriously...
Can a company that used to be so evil (spyware, user statistics reported without knowledge, etc) suddenly be doing good things like open source?
Maybe it's an honest new attitude... stranger things have happened!
Okay, this is all well and good. But I've been wondering:
Why bother with Helix when there are other freely-availble, open-source alternatives (e.g., mplayer, xine) that appear equally capable of supporting a variety of player formats?
haha suckers I got **BUFFERING**
RealPlayer 10 supports RealAudio, RealVideo 10, MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Theora, H263 and AAC
I'd be very concered about hidden spyware/trojans in these programs based on Real's past releases. Is the RealPlayer/Helix relationship similar to Mozilla/Netscape?
It's about time RP10 came out. Although I did not see a screen shot, the purported UI integration should help it seem more polished. Support for Ogg & AAC are definitely welcome.
Will reserve overall judgement to after the installation and operation of this, however.
Hate to say it, but why on Earth would anyone willingly use RealPlayer? Maybe the Linux version will be different, but I hate the Windows version. Bloated, slow, and full of ads. And where are those near-CD streams? I can find tons of them in MP3 format, but I can't recall the last time I heard a high-res Real stream.
instead of HTML, the pages might load faster. Anything to get it fixed. Previewing this comment took 13 seconds.
Simon's Rock College
helix does not support the real player only formats. there is therefore no reason to use helix over the dozens of other players out there unless you particularly like the inter...buffering...face.
If you can't beat Microsoft or Apple... go open source?
ditto
Do we hate Real today or do we love them?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Yeah, yeah, I know it's slashdot code to hate Real, but they've finally done something good. They continue to support Linux, and gave us the core of their player (which, IMO no longer sucks ass) and we're still criticizing them? Has anyone here even used Realplayer 10 Linux or Helix?
For christ's sake, you're all like one of those Windows users who will never touch Linux again because "it's all command line" or a Mac since "longhorn will have a 3D UI". Give the company another fucking shot, it's not every day we get a decent media player that supports Theora, Vorbis or their own codecs.
what about all the steps before this one? surely one of them makes a better "first" step.
i motion that we call this a great 18309th step.
(the number is made up, but it seems to be in the ball park)
My Systems
I downloaded the player, its actually quite nice, no ads, aparently no spyware... Maybe this is a good thing.
I recently downloaded Free Real Player Enterprise (argh, what a mouthful), which doesn't _seem_ to have any spyware at all:
m l
http://www.realnetworks.com/products/rpe/index.ht
btw, i put bogus personal info into the form and it did not require me to reply to an email in order to download the product.
I just downloaded realplayer 10, but I get this message when trying to play a realone file:
"The content you are trying to play uses an audio codec that is obsolete and no longer supported. Please contact the content provider about using a supported codec."
What's up with this? I got the file from Cdnow.com.
---------
How is Linux suppose to be ready for the desktop if developers/users continue with 'patents be damned' attitude?
Xine and MPlayer aren't legal in many major markets. That rules them out for many of us.
Helix is legal and backed by RealNetworks legal department.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
I'm not going to install it quite yet ... so can someone tell me how well it works? When I tried RP9 for Linux (and the Helix beta), it was slow, crash-prone, buggy, and video generally didn't display right.
If it is as good as claimed, I'll be thrilled - there are several organizations I belong to that (for various reasons) only use RealMedia. I'm skeptical for now, but a stable RealPlayer for Linux would be wonderful (no, xine/mplayer are not perfect!).
"Our goal is to make the Linux desktop a first class citizen and we think today's releases are a good first step in that direction."
What makes them think that their crummy software is the first step in Linux's move to the desktop? I mean, do I have to spell it all out? Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice.org, Neverwinter Nights, Doom 3, etc, etc, etc...
Can Helix Player play Quicktime, etc.? Xine and mplayer can use binary codecs to play Quicktime and such, but can Helix Player do this, being backed by a competitor?
I get a Service Unavailable in 29 out of 30 tries for the front page when I'm logged in!
It's great that this is out, and has Theora support. Now if only I could figure out how to get Mplayer to actually encode things into Theora I could use it.
I recently tried RealPlayer 10's beta for Linux. It's actually pretty slick (well, it was beta, so it was a bit unstable at times, but hey...) and plays Icecast streams in Ogg Vorbis pretty damn well (and you can get just plain Helix Player for that too, without RealVideo support). It was small, not too slow (Linux versions of RP are never ever slow!) and there's no trace of ads!
Yeah, Windows players are probably hell, but the *NIX players have the history of ruling, at least to small extent =)
But to be perfectly honest, the real reason I switched from RP8 to RP10beta was the support for XVideo extension and actual support for fullscreen playing. Makes watching some videos far less annoying when you don't need to maximize the window and fullscreen mode doesn't eat all processor. And, yuck, RP8 was a Motif app and RP10 uses GTK+2.
No I've been getting them a lot... it usually works if I refresh a couple times though maybe slashdot has been slashdotted!
Anybody else get the plugins for mozilla to work? I copied them from the
audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin RealPlayer Plugin Metafile rpm Yes
in the about:plugins, but nothing from news.bbc.co.uk loads.
First, it doesn't require any kind of email registration. Second, it based on GTK - that's great, no more outdated Modif GUI. Let's see how it will be handled. I would like to point out that if we would have two descent Media frameworks - Helix and GStreamer (which still has to mature), then it would be very good. It's nice to see that Real learns something from their past.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Now there's no reason not to get it in Debian!
Someone please put up a Debian-package !
Is there any difference between these two? The docs seems a little scetchy on the feature details.
Hey, bad programmers (and anyone who's seen slashcode knows who I'm talking about) can write bad code using any paradigm.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Installation Instructions
- Ensure that the
- Run the
Rrriiiggghhhttt. Look Ma, we're back in 1993!
Some quality Spyware for Linux !
;)
Sheesh, it's been a long journey for that little penguin, but lets all say it "Linux has come of age" !
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
I knew I should have used the preview button
I've found that I only get the 503 errors if I'm logged in. If I disable cookies it starts working again.
Looks clean but reminds me just a BIT of totem.
Our goal is to make the Linux desktop a first class citizen and we think today's releases are a good first step in that direction.
I can attest to this, as they royaly fucked my Windows system the last time I installed Real player on it.
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
The sad thing with Real is that they've done such a good job of poisening the waters with previous releases.
When they thought they could play with the big boys (apple, microsoft) they would spam the living daylights out of people, they would load up their player with so much junk it blew your mind, they tookever system settings, popped up message center windows with marketing "alerts".
For a lot of early adopter folks in the open source space it's hard to forget the horrors of real's "customer friendly" policies.
Now they are realizing that they are unlikely to beat Microsoft at it's own game. So they have deceided to try and play with the nice kids. I wonder if management has changed. This feels to me less like a top down thing then someone in the company evangalizing a new approach.
If they had played clean from the start, with their branding etc they would have rocked as a linux player.
I think Novell actually is going to show how a clean playing company can leverage the open source world. They've really done the right thing so far through it all (SCO etc).
"Willingly" hmmm...
I have a subscription to access premium content provided through Real. As this requires me to use RealPlayer for Windows, I guess I don't use it willingly as such. While the older Linux versions may have played the video fine, it didn't appear to support the login process for premium content. This has brought the transition from Windows to Linux in my household to a grinding halt.
So, has anyone had any luck accessing premium streams with this new version?
Just downloaded it - looks pretty nice, BBC streams actually work now
If it's bandwith I'm sure they could solve it by adopting CSS...
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slashdot/
Why AC... cos the last time I logged in it 503'd me!
Interesting, when I try to listen to an audio clip on Amazon.com with Real Player 10, I get an error about the codec being too old and no longer supported.
While I've always had a love/hate relationship with RealPlayer (love the streaming format, hate the business practices), there's always been one thing that's made them useless on the Linux/Unix platform. It didn't support fullscreen play!
Does this new version support fullscreen playback? That's really the only feature I care about.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Well sure, between WordPerfect and RealPlayer, what more do you need on Linux?
they replace all the default icon's for whatever codecs they support. Now that sucks ass.
We hates them, precious! We hates them forever!
The files I play are stuttering even when they're local files and sometimes I have to hit my mouse button several time just to get a response from the app. Does anybody else see this and knows a workaround?
I'll get them for hours at a time at work. Lot's of fun. One of those "upgrades" that downgrades.
Microsoft, Apple and Real are the major commercial players in the media player and streaming video market. Microsoft for obvious and Apple for less obvious reasons won't support Linux, so it's a good opportunity for Real to become the dominant player here. At the moment, Linux desktop use doesn't amount to very much. The hope for Real is that it will accellerate in the coming years, especially since they seem to be losing the Windows desktop. Maybe they will become the Mozilla of media players?
Wow, excuse the bad spelling. Here's to previewing comments before submitting.
- augustz
That's all.
The Raven
When I use mozilla or mozilla firefox I get the 503's but when I use IE I don't get them. Are you kidding me, Slashdot?
got it on my n-gage qd. works well, other than the real video clips need to be very small quality. but regardless, i have video on my phone.
This is why Linux succeeds as an Operating System.
Granted it would be easier if you could just click on a file and have it execute but then you would wind up with all of the security flaws inherent in Windows.
Is it really so difficult to learn a few commands and/or type them in verbatim?
So *that*'s what happened to the Iraqi Information Minister!
Good ol' friendly with resources Perl... mmmmmm.
BTW, I had to fight through 4 rounds of 503 to read this story and post this comment... using Firefox on my Linux workstation at work.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
> And just how long do you think that they would get away with that in an open-source project?
In Soviet Russia you spy on Real Player!
I only get the 503's when trying to get to the front page. For some reason, anything else works fine, including the RSS feed (http://slashdot.org/index.rss). I can read the stories by going through the links from the RSS feed, but I can't get to them from the front page because of the 503s...
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
Try logging out.. works for me!
Good jesus, you need to get better at recognizing humor.
Hello? Did I just read what I thought I read!? Full support for Flash, and it's open-source!?!?? This is a first!!! This means that virtually any Un*xlike operating system, running on virtually any CPU, can now play Flash-- right?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Try loggin' out.. then I can hit the front page just fine.
Does anyone know if Real intends to develop a Linux version of it's MovieLinks and Starz Ticket pay services?
Just to give one example, KPlayer at version 0.5.1 is already light years ahead of any Real stuff and plays RealMedia just like any MPEG, AVI, MP3 or Ogg Media. It's MPlayer based, and its KDE interface is absolutely awesome.
Bye-bye Real!
The past couple of days I've not only been getting a lot of time outs when connecting to Slashdot, I've also been getting re-directed to microsoft.com when I try to go to Newsforge. Usually happens once or twice the first thing in the morning then never again for the rest of the day.
Don't know if it's something messed up at the dns servers here or what. I keep hoping Newsforge or Slashdot might actually have an article addressing the problems, but nothing yet.
So, it is the bad programmers' fault, eh?
Banu
EVEN NOW THE ERRORS ARE COMMITTING SUICIDE AT THE GATES OF SLASHDOT!!! THE INFIDEL 503 ERRORS WILL ROAST IN THE BELLIES OF THE SLASHDOTTERS!!!
Vote CmdrTaco for Slashdot Information Minister in '04.
As I understand it, Helix was a community-led project to design a cross-platform media player framework, the Helix Player, which is then used by Realnetworks to make their RealPlayer application with the addition of closed-source codecs and probably a degree of Real's nagware added in
So: Where.. or when, can I download Helix Player for Windows? I don't want or need Real's codecs on my system, but if the player is as good as people say I may consider using it instead of Windows Media Player for watching my downloaded movie files
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Does it offer FLAC support?
On Linux I decided to install RealOne since I couldn't seem to get other players to open 'real' media. I was actually surprised that it worked quite well, and while I've never been the fan of the cute interface stuff, it's a lot better than most of the skinnable junk in Linux. I have yet to find a decent front end to mplayer that I like. Kaffiene is a good front end to Xine, but Xine randomly barfs on some mpegs (before the last update it would only play mpegs and give white noise for all sounds).
RealPlayer is probably the ONLY player I've found on linux that just works. I'm looking forward to the GTK interface, and hopefully they added some features like always start up doubled in size. RealPlayer actually does what it is supposed to, so I don't think I could ask for more than that - and with no adds. I'll admit I'd still be weary to try it on windows, but I'm quite happy with the Linux incarnation.
Ok Helix Player has a H.263 codec that is the same codec that iChat uses. iChat has an open protocol so that means that some smart people could create an open source videochat application right? And it would work with Apple iChat!
See you around,
Dennis
CSS? Then we'd have to use DeCSS to read it on Linux! Oh, THAT CSS :)
There is already a bug filled at http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59281
What should I do, wait for the ebuild or install it.. To install or not to install that is the question.
> ..and does not assault me with ads or offers to upgrade anywhere near the extent that the older ones did
And what, I'm supposed to believe that they won't put them back in when its convenient to them? I don't think so.
Real's product/company image with technical users is trashed, and there's a *damn* good reason for that.
I can only speak for myself, but I will *never* use another Real product or support any website/organization that uses their products.
Does no one else get routinely tired of .rpm files being seen as "audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin" when trying to download a new RPM package from a web site?
:)
I wish that by now there would have been a resolution between the two file types. Other than switching off an RPM distribution
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Did you try Kaffeine?
I think it's even better than KPlayer. So good in fact that even Novell/SUSE and Turbolinux are using it as their default media player.
I do browse a lot of websites every day, and I don't really find any REAL sites anymore, almost all of them have are now using mediaplayer... even the pr0n sites switched! the only use for realplayer I can see now is that I can legally use it for my clients without having to fear a patent war...
about wolves attacking his flocks...untill one time it REALLY happened and no one believed him anuymore.
Now it's the same story for RealNetworks, No ONE believe them anymore after their dark past.
OSX seems to manage pointy-clicky installs without those inherent security flaws. And as a counterpoint:
rpm-uvh ClariaSpyware2.21.rpm
Installing from a commandline doesn't make the applications you install safe, nor does doig it by mouse make it unsafe. It's all about how the operating system handles priviledges and warnings, and the degree of power it gives to the application.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I stopped using Realplayer even under Windows a while back because the EULA for the newer ones, like Real One, had some seemingly nasty clauses with respect to third party apps and DRM. I think the one that got me was:
Now maybe that's harmless, but it wasn't at all clear to me. Suffice it to say that I don't like software trying to invade my privacy and play policeman in my home. It also seems like such a system is an inherent security vulnerability and could cause technical problems even with legally licensed but un-DRMed content (like my emusic mp3s or rips of my own CDs). I think DRM is a dumb idea, but I don't mind if the software has such a feature, as long as it's not enabled unless I specifically enable it to be able to get DRMed content.
So how is the EULA on the new realplayer? Is it any better?
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Those of you who haven't browsed through the material that the BBC offer really should check it out. One of the best areas is the "Listen Again" section of BBC 7, which repeats some of the best comedy and drama in their radio archives.
No, this isn't a paid advert for the BBC -- I'm just a very happy licence fee payer :).
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
"Two words: IBM."
Could this be a new trend here on slashdot.....lets see.
In soviet russia we say this when a company redeems itself...."two words: IBM."
no i don't think so.
stendec@gmail.com
My problem with many mainstream media players is that they look more like a street corner in Times Square than they do a media player.
There are widgets everywhere! Drawers here, buttons there, little flashing things here, a list of stations or channels over there, throw in a few more widgets that don't seem to do anything, and finally some widgets that are supposed to be used to hide all of the other widget-ware.
News flash. If I want to watch a video clip, you know what? I probably want a window that contains the video clip and maybe a clean simple menu for basic functions. Thats it guys. If memory serves, QT (at least on the Mac) may be closer to this, but of course it keeps asking me if I want to go Pro. Argh. I bought the hardware and the OS from them and they still want MORE.
Just like Real, it's not that IBM itself sucks or rocks, it's their actions that suck or rock.
You can't really trust any corporation to act for anything but its own benefit. Right now it must benefit IBM and Real to embrace F/OSS. Well, I guess actually because it's for their benefit it would be more the "OS" than the "F". They could as easily turn around (see SCO) and become "bastards" (to us) for the same basic reason.
(yes, I realize that a company can't undo open-sourcing something, but that doesn't make the company itself a lifetime member of the "Good Guys (tm)")
Not the point. The point is, in Linux, to install the program you download you have to first make it executable which is apparently too difficult for some folks. After it's executable you can run that Realplayer bin file any way you want.
The difference is, even if you inadvertently download something malicious you generally don't have to worry about it executing itself because you haven't specified it as an executable file on your system.
That work is already underway
I want the spyware feature included in all the other realplayer releases. Is this still available? If so, are they open source now!?
irc.enterthegame.com #linux
Tell you how screwed up /. is?
/.!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
This IS
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Why won't it play anything on http://www.real.com ? I'm all for this but come on... every link I click on returns an error... "The player does not have the capabilities to play back this content" What does it play?
One is the choice of backend. So it inherits all the problems with CPU usage, A/V going out of sync and so on and so forth. Hope we aren't going to start a flamewar here. Yes, MPlayer has its own problems, but I personally prefer it over Xine.
Second, it opens separate windows for some of its controls, while KPlayer keeps everything in one window by default.
So I have no problem with Kaffeine, but KPlayer is by far the best choice for me. The new File Properties thing is really cool, it remembers whatever options you set for each individual file. So normalizing the volume of audio files is as easy as holding shift while dragging the volume slider.
Infidel! I will defeat you in the streets with the power of a 1000 shoes!
iChat AV doesn't really use an open protocol; it uses some unholy combination of AIM and SIP.
Besides, you'd be better off starting with GnomeMeeting.
Real is still an asshole of a company.
At least it doesn't have to be installed by individual users any more...
Ick.
from the readme:
Alsa and esound drivers are not included in this build The OSS device used for playback can be set using the AUDIO environment variable. eg export AUDIO=/dev/dsp2
Hey any chance of a Windows port here folks, the real player we got still sucks.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
you forgot one major player on this field:
macromedia. they sneaked their flv format (btw, ffmpeg can handle it) into flash player 6. afaik it's installed on more machines than even microsofts media player.
I'm sick of these rumors about server errors! THEY ARE LIES!
The 503s are real.
The code appears during the execution of a troll.
Only subscribers can see the real show.
Trolls are nasty, but is this really the right solution?
Definitely!
Amnesty International is already investigating.
*zap!* another one bites into the dust.
100% open source? Is that better than 80% open and 20% free? Can we start applying open source percentages to commerical software, so that we can know which software is 100% closed vs. maybe something that is 16% open.
Does this mean I can see flash on my Linux Ibook????
I left a university job 6 months ago, and one of the nagging questions that I got before I left was "WHY do you people make us download and install RealPlayer and all its adware/spyware/credit card requesting crap to view multimedia on your school's website?" Well -- at the time, licensing for adequate #'s of Windows Media-based servers was too expensive relative to the early-adopter setup of RealServer(s) around campus.
Still, you can't get students (or parents) to like your school's website when the audio/video tours are rife with SUBSCRIBE NOW notices every time you load a presentation.
From what I've heard, though, RealNetworks is offering a corporate version of the RealPlayer sans the adware/spyware/subscribe now bullshit. My multimedia counterpart at the school that I left says that they've made it a free download from their various website properties to avoid complaints from both prospective students and alumni alike.
My 2 cents.
IronChefMorimoto
Gstreamer sucks. I hate it, to me it signifies everything that is wrong with OSS.
.6 branch was left in a state of complete disarray while developers jumped on the .7 and .8 branches.
After years of development, they STILL haven't reached 1.0.
The
Gstreamer is a bitch to install. They instructions for major distributions like RedHat 9 were broken for a good 18 months before someone removed them, the RedHat apt-get repository was missing major RPMs. I filed bugs, talked on the IRC channel and in the mailinglists, tried to suggest fixes myself. Most developers basically told me to fuck off (but some were great).
Compiling from source was incredibly painful-- to play basic codecs I needed to visit a dozen other websites and compile a zillion files from source.
All in all, I think I had to download and compile 20 projects in order to get gstreamer to function at all.
My Linux box is so polluted with crap from Gstreamer that I don't even know where to begin to clean it up (Developers: If you use 'make install', there should be a 'make uninstall').
And after spending 20 hours on this, I still can't get Gstreamer to play most multimedia files!
Been using Firefox for long time, never saw a 503 error on ./
Wow, I'm impressed. It starts up instantly, there are no ads, no annoying noises at startup, etc. I'm amazed that this is Real Player! And to top it off, it didn't add an entire submenu to my GNOME Applications menu... it put itself into Multimedia. That kind of behaviour gives me a lot more respect for Real.
GStreamer is where Linux multimedia frameworks are going. It has everything needed; both KDE and GNOME folks love it.
By contrast, few people have anything good to say about Helix/Realplayer.
I and many others have specifically asked the Real folks what it is that they're trying to provide with Realplayer/Helix that GStreamer doesn't already have. They didn't have an answer.
Likewise, I asked them why they wouldn't contribute to the more popular GStreamer framework, if they're so interested in creating a standard. Again, no answer.
The only reason Helix exists is that Real needs to find a new niche in order to survive, and they think the Linux community is an easy target to worm their way into. They won't even commit to an open-source (never mind Free) way of doing things (as evidenced by their site's myriad of licensing etc.), but they'll happily claim to be the number one Linux multimedia provider, and label their closed Realplayer as 'Open Source' (see the help menu in that product).
Above all, though. It just sucks. I downloaded Realplayer and Helix. Neither of them could play a basic radio stream. Downloading the older Realplayer 8 codecs and playing through xine worked just fine. If they're that incompetent with their own products, along with all the other distain they've shown for true Open Source/Free community involvement, I for one hope they go away. Soon.
Sorry, no. I hate Gstreamer, and I'm really happy to see another player in the game. Maybe the Gstreamer devs will get off their asses.
.6 branch was left in a state of complete disarray while developers jumped on the .7 and .8 branches.
Gstreamer sucks. I hate it, to me it signifies everything that is wrong with OSS.
After years of development, they STILL haven't reached 1.0.
The
Gstreamer is a bitch to install. They instructions for major distributions like RedHat 9 were broken for a good 18 months before someone removed them, the RedHat apt-get repository was missing major RPMs. I filed bugs, talked on the IRC channel and in the mailinglists, tried to suggest fixes myself. Most developers basically told me to fuck off (but some were great).
Compiling from source was incredibly painful-- to play basic codecs I needed to visit a dozen other websites and compile a zillion files from source.
All in all, I think I had to download and compile 20 projects in order to get gstreamer to function at all.
My Linux box is so polluted with crap from Gstreamer that I don't even know where to begin to clean it up (Developers: If you use 'make install', there should be a 'make uninstall').
And after spending 20 hours on this, I still can't get Gstreamer to play most multimedia files!
What's this error that I see?
I do not like this 503.
How can this have come to be,
Using software that is free.
while true ; do echo this is my sig; done
In other news company managers around the world applauded a strange and unexpected productivity increase from their IT departments.
When I removed my slashdot cookies, the problem went away.
Just FYI, plugin support has worked since at least RealPlayer version 8.
I currently have RP8 + the RP9 codecs installed on slackware 10, and plugin support works just fine. You just need to put raclass.zip and rpnp.so in your mozilla plugins/ dir, and make sure that "realplay" is in your PATH, and it works fine.
Between that and mplayerplugin, I'm all set for media types. I'll consider upgrading to RP10 when I find something I can't watch with RP8/9.
The most interesting thing about this release is that it seems to support player scripting! This is quite interesting when developing web based presentations.. Good stuff Real!!
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Nice to know that us Caltech grads are making useful contributions to the world (not just when it comes to earthquakes and JPL) :-)
Less so that previous versions, but it's still almost viral in its behavior. It has a component that checks for messages and "special offers" that it puts in the Registry to run when Windows runs. If you kill it off and remove it from the registry Real Player just starts it up and puts it back in the registry every time it runs.
Unless of course you manage to find the secret setting buried in the options dialogs to turn it off, though when you try to do so there's a popup "strongly" warning you that it's a bad idea. Ha!
If you're buffering it's because of your crappy internet connection. Period. I have always preferred the sound of a well done realaudio stream over WMA for richness of sound.
Will Helix take XMMS plugins? Or at least an "XMMS input Plugins" plugin API connector? I don't want to leave all my other weird audio formats to rot when I switch.
--
make install -not war
You don't use the email address "bogado@visgraf.[omitted*].br", do you? Our office gets dozens of spams with that (otherwise unknow) return address daily, with various Subject:'s and attached Windows (virus) executables. By far the most popular return address of any virus spams we receive, by about 50:1 to the next most popular.
* Primary domain name omitted.
--
make install -not war
I've been using helixplayer with mixed success. However, I've never had complaints about helix or real, under linux, in terms of "evil". I want it to work to watch cspan ... all cspan broadcasts are streamed. www.cspan.org
That and MLB broadcasts. :)
Whats "yuk" about motif?
Great, so now i gotta sort through my libg32423sdfjewri3jrwejw.so.1.2.3.1 libs just to use realplayer.
installing and upgrading anything gome or gtk is a pain, and ive done it with rpm, ports, emerge or just plain source code, and something that relies son so many different lib's just to function is yuk, we all like pretty things, but in the end we use programs for what they do not what they look like.
If you upgrade something suddenly in gtk, all of a suddon over half of your x-apps dont work. and thats "yuk". While Motif and Xt rarely ever upgrade, and apps made with them are less likely to freeze, or require extensive lib searching/installing.
THERE ARE NO ELECTIONS! There is no better leader than CMDRTACO! You heathens who question his divine right shall be burned! ELECTIONS ARE FOR ATHEISTS AND INFIDELS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
If you don't want all the widgets, why not use kmplayer?
IMHO, anything that installs itself on your computer in multiple locations so that you have to contort your computer to remove it is spyware.
realplayer is spyware
realplayer is spyware
realplayer is spyware
While I respect the fact that they're trying out more friendly methods and might even give the current player a try, why should I immediately trust them again?
They have stated in previous posts that they changed their business model. That's great, but where's the guarantee they won't change it back the moment they find out their current one isn't working?
I'm not opposed to them in their current form but I would rather support companies I trust and know won't screw over their customers when they need to make a quick buck.
I just installed Real Player 10 for linux on my ultralight laptop (Sharp MM20, Suse 9.1)
I have XINE and Mplayer configured for use with win32 codecs; before installation they both played realvideo files without problems (South Park episodes, etc). After installation, both XINE and Mplayer lost their capability to play Real Video files. In addition RealPlayer 10 has performance problems compared to XINE and Mplayer
(dropped frames, poor audio). Back to xine and mplayer for me!
After reading the /. description, I still have two questions:
Is the Helix Player 100% open source?
Does it support Ogg Vorbis and Theora?
That sounds like a red herring. We all know that software on a theoretical level is math, like lambda calculus for example, however using that type of math you are describing a procedure. Creating software is in essence creating a technical procedure that instructs a microprocessor to accomplish something. Procedures can be patented under United States Law. Below is an excerpt from the USPO FAQ that describes what qualifies to be patented.
"In the language of the statute, any person who "invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent," subject to the conditions and requirements of the law. The word "process" is defined by law as a process, act or method, and primarily includes industrial or technical processes. The term "machine" used in the statute needs no explanation. The term "manufacture" refers to articles that are made, and includes all manufactured articles. The term "composition of matter" relates to chemical compositions and may include mixtures of ingredients as well as new chemical compounds. These classes of subject matter taken together include practically everything that is made by man and the processes for making the products."
2+2=4 is not a program it is an equation not a procedure. It does not instruct how to add two and two together, it only shows that in fact they are added together. If you where to say that you can add two and two together by doing X Y and Z then you have a procedure that can be patented.
Use DoubleThink.
DoubleThink: Now in new Exotic Vanilla Flavour!
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
People - enough already. Every time Real is mentioned on Slashdot, some smartass has to go on about buffering. I mean, come on - it used to be really bad in the old days, but Real have learnt their lesson and improved the damned thing, so it's now way easier to...buffering...buffering...
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw
Which makes me wonder what's really going on here. The poster who started this /. thread said "The Helix Player is 100% open source, (now including the GPL!)...". One wonders if the player can be redistributed by anyone or if the player is improperly licensed.
If I can't supply "complete corresponding source code" (to quote the GPL) to the program, or if I can't make good on a written promise to supply said source code, then I can't distribute it under the GNU GPL. I wonder this because of RMS' interpretation of plugins. Considering the case where plugins (such as codecs might be) are a derivative work of the master program, I have to wonder if the program is improperly licensed and, despite the licensing attempt, is not actually copyleft free software as the license intends.
Digital Citizen
I found real player 10 for linux quite good, until
realizing a built in DRM feature: It is no more possible to grab a frame (window grabbing) with
import ppm:- >test.pnm
This used to work before. Confirms: for
proprietary software, keep backups of the old
versions.
I don't even know what everyones talking about in regards this problem & my Opera 7.23 Win32 install beens logging onto slashdot every day since before it was a Opera 4 install, & the only problem I had with Slasdot was a Pink screen I had for about a week a couple of years ago.
No more tray icons/startup processes without permision & no more file extension theivery from other programs without permision either.
It's quite good the way the advanced install button lets one chose what file extensions get opened by by Realplayer 10.
Pity there's no install options like "only link so far un-attributed media file types to Realplayer 10" or "only open Real developed file types with Realplayer 10", as going through that media file extension list took longer than I liked.
If they build it...it wont work. Sort of that field of dreams meets a 64 bit bus.
/opt/RealPlayer/share/realplay/icon.png: Unable to load image-loading module: /usr/lib64/gtk-2.0/2.4.0/loaders/libpixbufloader-p ng.so: /usr/lib64/gtk-2.0/2.4.0/loaders/libpixbufloader-p ng.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
$ realplay
(realplay.bin:8666): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "bluecurve",
Failed to load pixbuf file:
(realplay.bin:8666): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: file gdk-pixbuf-io.c: line 762 (gdk_pixbuf_new_from_file): assertion `error == NULL || *error == NULL' failed
(realplay.bin:8666): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: file gdk-pixbuf-io.c: line 762 (gdk_pixbuf_new_from_file): assertion `error == NULL || *error == NULL' failed
And of course I can't get the source and build from scratch so...we'll probably have to wait for Fedora 3.
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
The blurb says it's "100% open source", but when I run it the first time the "Setup Assistant" wantns me to accept a License Agreement that starts out:
REDISTRIBUTION NOT PERMITTED
Methinks Real has a different idea of what a GPL-compatible, open-source license is than I do.
Haha! That is actually very well written. Beauty in simplicity. Cheers for posting something that actually made me laugh a bit, first time in a long time reading crashdot
Whats "yuk" about motif?
Programming for it being gigantic pain in the ass? Generally ugly appearance? Absolutely horrible file picking dialogs? (Fucking hell, those things suck!) More or less stagnated development?
Funny. I can just "apt-get install" it. Maybe you should blame your distro, rather than the project. Or maybe you should realise that 1.0 means stable, and they're entirely right to spend years getting to 1.0 if that's what it takes. And they're also entirely right to move on to 0.7+ if they feel 0.6 is flogging a dead horse. That's what happens when you develop against rapidly-changing APIs.
I posted it AC the other day....+5 funny... post it like that....don't get shit. :(
while true ; do echo this is my sig; done
I had very much trouble getting iTunes-ripped AAC files played on Linux - because the XMMS plugins don't even compile, pre-built binaries aren't available because Dolby is being annoying about licensing, and the FAAD binaries are rather problematic.
Then, RealPlayer 10 beta. Wham! Works right away!
Dolby-blessed AAC binaries for Linux = GOOD.
Linux PPC version is available here:
https://player.helixcommunity.org/2004/downloads/
https://helixcommunity.org/projects/player