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:excellent!

[andreyw]

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

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.

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: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

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: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.)