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."

Comments

features

[Anonymous Coward]

RealPlayer 10 supports RealAudio, RealVideo 10, MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Theora, H263 and AAC

Re:excellent!

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Xine tends to lose sync when I use it for RA, especially if I am doing something else on the PC at the same time (placing the PC under load). The Real player can handle that.

The effect is: whatever I am listening to comes out completely garbled. I have to terminate and restart Xine.

Re:excellent!

[groomed]

RealPlayer 10 doesn't ask for your email address anymore. I just installed it. It looks decent enough.

Also support for playing Real media formats in Xine/mplayer still isn't quite as reliable as the real thing. Not to mention the browser plugin support. Finally Xine/mplayer can be a bitch to install.

I like what Real's doing. RealPlayer 10 is like the RealPlayer 1.0 that never was.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean Real will release how it hacked into iTunes/iPod?

They already have. They used publicly available information.

RealPlayer/Helix Relationship

[Roguelazer]

"The Helix Player is the Helix Community's open source media player for consumers. It is being developed to have a rich and usable graphical interface and support a variety of open media formats like Ogg Vorbis, Theora etc. The RealPlayer for Linux is built on top of the Helix Player for Linux and includes support for several non-open source components including RealAudio/RealVideo, MP3 etc."

From the helix site itself. :D

Re:excellent!

[groomed]

I saw some patches coming by on the mplayer-dev mailing list that purportedly implement seeking for Real streams, but I don't know if they ever made it in and/or how reliable they are. Other than that there are sync problems (as the other poster mentioned), connection problems (with rtsp:// in particular, yes, the live.com libs sorta work, no, sorta isn't good enough), stability problems, and assorted minor brokennesses.

I love mplayer but of all the formats it supports, Real is perhaps the worst.

Re:Helix!

[LightStruk]

Could this be the beginning of a multimedia framework for GNU/Linux?

Is the existing multimedia framework not good enough for you?

Re:excellent!

[andreyw]

RTFA. Helix is non-intrusive, non-commercial, non-irritating, non-email-address-asking.

Re:helix vs real

[redtux1]

Just downloaded it - looks pretty nice, BBC streams actually work now

Re:Getting the plugins to work?

[falkryn]

I did a ln -s /rp_source_dir/plugins/* /usr/lib/mozilla-1.7/plugins

sort of like a java plugin install. works great for me.

Wrong ...

[vlad_petric]

xine/mplayer are hardly illegal. They are indeed covered by mpeg4 patents (which only apply if you sell a certain number of units), and furthermore it is illegal (DMCA ...) to distribute them with libdvdread.

That's all.

symbian

[jford235]

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.

Re:Showstopper question

[groomed]

Yes, it supports fullscreen playback. It isn't as fast and clever as, say, mplayer, but it's there and it works.

Re:THERE ARE NO 503 ERRORS!! QUIT SPREADING LIES!!

[jd142]

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.

Re:Why is this forcing me to use IE

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because the problem is in the login mechanism. If you delete the /. cookies (or use a browser without them), you get rid of the 503 errors.

Re:Good news

[Kristoffer Lunden]

Well, on Windows, there is probably no better player than Media Player Classic, which already can run Real stuff via Real Alternative. Also, mplayer is available for windows, though I've not tried playing Real with it outside Linux.

As for Real themselves, I kinda like what they are doing now, but old grudges die hard. I am torn between wanting to support people doing the right thing and feeling they haven't been punished nowhere near enough for past things yet.

Re:Getting the plugins to work?

[Jim Hall]

... but nothing from news.bbc.co.uk loads.

Make sure that you allow the BBC site to display popups. When you click on their link, javascript will try to open a popup. Mozilla blocked the popup for me until I allowed it. Plays fine! -jh

What about the EULA

[internic]

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:

"DRMs may be able to revoke your ability to use applicable content. RN is not responsible for the operation of the third party DRM in any way, including revocation of your content. RN is not responsible for any communications to or from any third party DRM provider, or for the collection or use of information by third party DRMs. You consent to the communications enabled and/or performed by the DRM, including automatic updating of the DRM without further notice, despite the provisions of AutoUpdate defined in Section 6(c)."

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?

Re:What about the EULA

[jschottm]

I work for a university and looked at the Real DRM setup this past spring. (I didn't go with it because it was too expensive for our budget.) My department offers online video classes, and I was hoping that the DRM would allow us to offer them via download or on CD/DVD-ROM to students who didn't have a good enough connection to handle streaming files.

We would have had to protect some of the classes because some profs have intellectual property issues with what they're teaching.

The Real DRM is a wrapper that encloses a realmedia file, and has the details of what DRM server has authority over it, and what the restrictions are. The Real client connects to the server (that my department would have owned) when it attempts to play a DRMed file and secures permission to play it. The fact that each company runs their own rights server is what they mean by third party DRM.

Here's exactly what the clause means:

-----
DRMs may be able to revoke your ability to use applicable content. RN is not responsible for the operation of the third party DRM in any way, including revocation of your content.
-----

Translation: Real cannot control what people using its software do with it. Duh. They give a large amount of control to the entity distributing the media. If my acceptable use policy says that all of your rights will be terminated if we catch you spreading the file to unauthorized persons, we can do that serverside.

-----
RN is not responsible for any communications to or from any third party DRM provider, or for the collection or use of information by third party DRMs.
-----

Translation: Because the DRM software works by identity, there's a certain amount of data that can be collected. Real is not responsible for that any more than Apache is for people getting info from their webserver.

-----
You consent to the communications enabled and/or performed by the DRM, including automatic updating of the DRM without further notice, despite the provisions of AutoUpdate defined in Section 6(c).
-----

Real has to be able to update DRM to fix problems. They have an accountability to the users who buy a rather expensive package to maintain some kind of security.

If you don't like it, don't use it. But there's nothing in that clause that indicates it will ever do anything to your mp3s, just secured Real files.

Yay! Now I can listen to BBC radio in Linux!

[jonathan_ingram]

I've been waiting for a decent non-beta version of Helix/RealPlayer for Linux for a while now -- and now I can finally listen to all the output the BBC provide while working.

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 :).

Debian packages already started

[robla]

That work is already underway

Re:Getting the plugins to work?

[dd]

I found that you also needed to do
(fedora core 2 - system plugin dir is /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ ):
ln -s /path/to/rp_source_dir/mozilla/nphelix.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/.

Re:RealPlayer 10 Does Play RealOne Files!

[Anonymous Coward]

"you can now enjoy all those embedded media clips, as well as the latest RealAudio 10, RealVideo 10"

It wont support Real 9 or below ...

Re:OPEN-SOURCE FLASH PLUGIN?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Helix Player doesn't support flash. Real Player does.

Erase cookies

[Anonymous Coward]

When I removed my slashdot cookies, the problem went away.

It still sucks on Windows

[Blic]

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!

Re:We're so conflicted

[jc42]

Well, after a week without access to ComedyCentral.com after I made the mistake of trying RealPlayer10 on my PowerBook, I certainly wouldn't use the word "love".

OTOH, I did just manage to re-install the RealOne Player that came with the machine, after a lot of stumbling around through pages that told me it was no longer supported. Now I can finally see their coverage of the Democratic Convention without waiting til 11 pm and hoping they rebroadcast it on TV.

Yes, google found lots of discussions of the problem. Even some suggestions for fixes. None of them worked. Eventually I stumbled across explanations of why this and a long list of other sites don't work. Maybe the next release will fix the problem.

But next time, I'll do a thorough google search before attempting to install anything of theirs. They seem to believe in letting their users do most of the testing. (And you might note that the download file has the string "beta" in its name.)

I might mention, though, that RealPlayer 10 comes with its own browser, and it's actually a fairly nice addition to my growing list of browsers. But even their own browser didn't show Comedy Central, or a number of other less important sites. Those it did show, worked much better than their older players.

(I've started seeing quite a lot of claims that the best coverage of the American election is at ComedyCentral.com, and I think I agree. If you really want to know what's going on, check them out. Unfortunately, they only post videos in Real format.)

Re:Going against code.

[default luser]

The "hidden link" comment has a double-meaning.

In the days of yore, not only did you have to tromp through phantom links to find the free version of the player.

Once you actually downloaded the software and went to install it, you would be presented with a page full of "opt-in" crap. I say "opt-in" because Real cleverly had all the options you could see on the screen deselected by default.

The evil part: they made it hard to see that the screen could actually scroll, and there was additional crap hidden below that was CHECKED BY DEFAULT.

Now, you can say what you want about trying to sell people the super-platinum-mega player, but hiding "opt-out" options below options that are clearly "opt-in"...that's sneaky and unforgivable.

Re:OPEN-SOURCE FLASH PLUGIN?

[evilviper]

This means that virtually any Un*xlike operating system, running on virtually any CPU, can now play Flash-- right?

The GPL'd flash player has been around for quite some time.

http://www.swift-tools.net/Flash/