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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."
I hope to play with this later.
Could this be the beginning of a multimedia framework for GNU/Linux?
Join the Free Software Foundation
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?
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"The content you are trying to play uses an audio codec that is obsolete and no longer supported.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.
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Cheers!
Erick
P.S. Yes, I know I should look at some of the other non-MS/Real players out there and will do so.
http://www.busyweather.com/
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.
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).
Hmm...Since Helix has been open-sourced, what's to stop someone from porting it to Windows, so one could dispense with RealPlayer and all the goop it installs? Is it just me or does that makes some kind of sense? Not that I'm advocating running Windows or anything, mind you!
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?
Funny, I've noticed that too.
Nearly everyone in the Linux community agrees that the way to get Linux on the desktop is to entice the big-name software developers to write more programs for Linux.
Then, when one of the most well-known (even if not well liked) companies jumps up and does it, everyone cries and whines about it. Frankly Realplayer didn't do anything a dozen or more other software companies did/still do. They just got caught.
As for Realplayer, my advice would be to download it even if you don't install it. When a company like that supports Linux it's a good idea to at least look like we're supporting them back as a flag to any other companies that may be watching from the fence.
It's propably their last chance. If Linux succeeds as desktop OS, their player is the only one (at least the only mature one) available.
Windows comes with WMP (QT also beeing scusessfull) and Mac OS comes with QT.
There are only Linux and other unixy OSes left for Real to be the default Player.
I saw a statistic a few weeks ago. According to that, Windows Media and QuickTime are more or less tied with a litte less than 40% market share.
Real had a little more than 20%.
BTW: HelixPlayer is only developed for Linux/x86 and Symbian (other ports are untested).
I don't see a full Helix Player for Windows or Mac OS. (Windows has a very simple Helix Client) Users of these OSes should - according to Real - get the full RealPlayer.
Heaven forbid one would hold Real accountable for it's past behavior. Real didn't become a Slashdot pariah by giving us the core of their player. They got their reputation from introducing spyware, playing hide-the-link, and assorted other annoying behavior. If you feel that these criticisms are invalid, please jump in and point out the errors.
Having said that - I do think that some of the criticism I've seen under this thread is invalid. I'm glad Real is trying to do some Good Things. And I'm willing to see what they're doing these days.
Just don't expect this behavior to instantly wipe out years of previous history.
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
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!
People Like Me [tm] who have convinced our significant others that broadband is more important than cable or satellite television!
I'm quite happy with Real Player.
I do however need something to watch or listen to from time to time. I've always listened to Air America Radio with it. I just moved into a new place and can't really afford cable television right now. However for less than 20 bucks a month I do get a whole bunch of media and get it on demand. (SuperPass, however I'm on the trial now)
I watched the Convention with it, listen to Jazz with it - all with "Tivo" like control. Right now I'm listening to Al Franken and listening to it from 30 minutes ago. A feature many streaming audio clients don't support.
If I can use the Helix DRM module I'll use it. Sure, DRM is scarry for a lot of people. But when it allows me to download 100 movies from Starz! a month for just $14... that is cool. (Live streams of Starz! also) Also I hate being forced into Windows. Just don't force me to run the DRM features as root, we're cool.
VoIP from the cable company? Nah... TVoIP from the phone company.
With 3Mb/s from the phone company for $45 a month you can get all of your "living room" needs from your computer.
Get your Unix fortune now!