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Mozilla Partners with Real Networks
engineer_uhg writes to tell us that Mozilla has just entered into a multi-year agreement with Real Networks to have Firefox distributed with downloads of RealPlayer, Rhapsody, and RealArcade. The Mozilla team cited Real's estimated 2 million downloads per day as a great tool for distribution. However, many Firefox supporters question the move, complaining of questionable practices by Real.
I already use Opera over Firefox because of, among many other things, the excessive memory footprint of Firefox. I don't think bundling it with bloated software like RealPlayer is the best way to improve that perception or problem.
Einstein, read the story again. Realplayer download will include firefox and will give users the option of installing firefox while they install realplayer. No one is embedding realplayer inside firefox.
Here you go.
Though it is still 20MB!
Technology tips and tricks.
From what I read, it comes bundled with downloads of realplayer, but realplayer is not bundles with downloads of firefox.
In other words: Firefox=Firefox, Realplayer=Realplayer+Firefox
Still not the nicest company to bundle with in terms of reputation, but at least it doesn't seem that you're getting stuck with Real when installed firefox.
Actually, you can get Quicktime without iTunes. There is a standalone installer (linked on the normal download page) that, once downloaded, does not require internet access to complete the installation and does not include anything but the Quicktime player. It is here:
e .html
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalon
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
:wq!
I REPEAT, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT MOZILLA NOW PACKAGES REAL SOFTWARE WITH ITS PRODUCTS. IT IS THE OPPOSITE, REAL WILL NOW PACKAGE FIREFOX WITH THEIR PRODUCTS.
Can we call off the Calvary now?
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
Fire fox is just being bundled with their some of their downloads. It has nothing to do with firefox and video players. If the VLC or MPlayer people wanted to bundle firefox likely they could go ahead and do so quite easily.
Looking at your post though it seems like your asking why real isn't bundling vlc and mplayer though.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
Did you even read the article? Firefox will be offered with every RealPlayer, Rhapsody and RealArcade download, NOT the other way around. You will still be able to download Firefox on its own, just as you have always been able to. This will only affect people downloading Real's products, and may convert a whole bunch of them into Firefox users. Where's the problem?
It is labeled insightful because people are idiots and they jump to conclusions. Real is not going to be bundled with Firefox... its the other way around.
You are all a bunch of idots.
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/20/ 2350241&mode=nested&tid=106
Most of the people I know who hate real have not used it since version 8.
Yes..there was a time when Real was an EVIL company. BUT..they have done many things since then (ever heard of helix player..you CAN download it for free you know). They've done quite a lot in the open source world as well.
Come on, it's legit to dump on a company for a bad product. But it's been YEARS since the worst of their products that had stuff bundled you didnt want was distributed.
Personally, I don't use real, but their stuff hasn't been horribly bad since the days when they were trying to trick you into installing stuff (which now they don't do).
Hating real has become de-facto religion for some.
Are you sure you're not using Real Alternative? I can't fathom your comment because RealPlayer is the most ad-ridden, cluttered useless interface I've ever seen in my life. The first time I ran it I almost couldn't figure which window had the video. And needless to say it was the last time.
OTOH Real Alternative is a WMP embed (there's also a QT one) which uses WMP 6.1 and no ads.
I wish there was a link to the complaints.
o bnoxious
http://jogin.com/weblog/archives/2004/02/29/real_
This is Slashdot, hating Real Player and accuse them of spying is a fashion. :)
You shouldn't bother replying. This is easy karma. Whatever they accomplish like staying alive against MS empire, it won't change. Someone will post "Real is a virus/spyware" crap and get +5 insightful.
Yea, it is spyware etc etc. I just feel sorry for Real Networks trying to do many favours to OSS community such as Helix Player along with its source, winning the portable multimedia market so Microsoft Media Division won't start another monopoly, giving them hell in EU courts resulting removal of windows media player installed by default to windows and so on.
OK, they will accuse me (!) for working at Real or getting paid to post comments again... I didn't see who submitted it but I really hope it is not a Helix coder or someone involved with Real Networks. You really need dozens of more "spyware" accusations from this user profile?!
You think someone will come up and ask if Gecko rendering engine will be bundled to Real Player instead of MSHTML linking? Or will Real Networks help Mozilla folks with their amazing portable/device experience and help ship a really working portable Gecko?
Real Networks, if you want to see an appreciating community, check OS X downnload feedback, we are all happy with what you offer for years and not abandoning us like some "non spyware" monopolists did.
To be honest, I'm happy about this move. Not all sites work yet with Firefox, my bank included. But when I called last time to complain, they said more and more people are using Firefox and they are studying seriously to make their site compatible.
If I follow my logical vision of that, then if people continue to install it (and that by any mean, I don't care), the internet should be eventually more free.
I can't complain. Anyway it doesn't force anyone to install Firefox if he doesn't want, nor RealPlayer.
I say good move.
I hate all sigs, mine included.
Personally I don't use products from Real (I haven't even looked at them for several years), however, they are popular.
People keep saying "Real sucks", well a hell of a lot of people use it/download it, so there are a lot more people out there who like Real. And all these people are now going to have a chance to try out Firefox.
Why does Firefox need to push its market share? More market share means more money for one (through the sponsored search), and more money *hopefully* translates into a better product, and more adverting/deals like this.
Right now, a lot of websites simply *arn't* Firefox friendly, if market share hit 35%, could these websites afford to ignore Firefox any more? As a Firefox user this is important to me...
Finally, the more market share Firefox takes, the better MS will have to make IE, and in turn the better Firefox will become.. Why release a product for something like web browsing if you only want a small market share?... Firefox isn't "A tool for geeks", it's something to make the web expierence better - and it certainly does (I know no mention of Opera and others in this post, they have their place, especially Opera, but Firefox is in the best position to gain market share right now it seems)
No, I'm not using Real Alternative, it's the real thing.
This is how it looks when I open a music file. See? Pretty simple, opens really fast, doesn't get in the way, good eye-candy, no ads.
This is how it looks in full-mode, with media library open. It is bit slow to open in my computer (PIII 1GHz), but that is also because of the large amount of music files in the DB. Anyway, I only use it when I specifically want to and that's not often. Again, I can't say much against it.
When I open a video, it looks the same way as when I open a music file, except it also shows... the video. All in the same window and the same I said before.
Actually, for those concerned with privacy, Real Player gives easy access to privacy control options. Just check the options screen.
There is also something called message center. I'm not sure what it is, because I turned it off right after install, but I guess those ads and pop-ups you talk about come through here. However, it is kids play to deactivate it. Just click on the option to do so.
I understand all the rage against Real, I shared it too when using the old players, but today it is way better. Not perfect, but much better. Ok, it might not come optimized for privacy, but with little effort you can do it. Really little effort, considering that, as it plays most media formats, you only have to configure one player. This is specially good with quicktime formats, because it also gives the benefit of full-screen video.Actually, everybody wins.
Real helps to keep Microsoft playing somewhat fair by continuing to exist.
Users who need Real Player will get Firefox in the bargain.
Firefox, although not the perfect browser, is a far cry from the pig that is MSIE. They make more than a token attempt to support CSS and PNG
As more users discover Firefox, they will use it rather than MSIE (even the white elephant known as MSIE7)
This means that web developers can use CSS2 more, rendering table layouts a thing of the past (oops, no pun intended!), and PNG can be used for ANY element in a page, not being restricted to only elements that a DirectX filter can access. THe word will spread that Firefox is better than MSIE (and folks, discovering there is software from vendors other than Microsoft, might venture out and discover Opera while they are at it). Other browsers' share will rise, MSIE's will fall.
Microsoft will then be forced to FINALLY bring their browser into compliants and knock off their embrace-extend-extinguish methodology. Eventually it really won't matter whether you're using Firefox, MSIE, konqueror, safari, opera, or {other} to view a web page - every browser will come close to being standards-compliant.
is this an idealistic view? Certainly, but it is not infeasible.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The latest QuickTime formats are H.264/MPEG-4 AVC for video and AAC for audio. Open source decoders exist for both. In fact, last year, ffmpeg was bragging that they could play QuickTime 7 videos on Windows before QuickTime could.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
Because they never distributed dog turds "year after year," maybe? They only actually did so for a year or a few years, and then apparently learned their lesson -- their Widgets haven't been dog turds for several years now.
Plus, their "Whatsit" -- also known as Helix player -- is Free Software! I don't know about you, but I'm willing to give them another chance.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I was actually shocked after installing when, after restarting... I din't get some sort of sneaky update scheduler running.
Real is competing with Quicktime. They have solutions for Quicktime. They had a working (and free!) Real export plugin which functioned perfectly until Quicktime 7 shipped and Apple changed things as usual :)
n dex.html
It still works with QT 6.x+10.3.9 combination http://www.realnetworks.com/products/realexport/i
Microsoft Windows Media Player for OS X was a Carbon based product. It was going nowhere with Mactel announced, it was already having problems with Tiger and so on. So, MS made a clever choice by globally licensing flip4mac basic player.
On the other hand, Realplayer 11 OS X is a perfectly optimised universal binary which has some qualities like simplicity and stability. It uses Quicktime frameworks already to display whatever Quicktime can. They coded it totally respecting OS X guidelines linking it to system frameworks.
Besides all, they have 2.5 million paying for content subscribers, add some other content providers too. I agree it is not "player" anymore but if it is "paid content", there is DRM involved. Nobody can "do" others DRM yet. For example while MS globally licensed product, flip4mac can't show DRM content.
I suspect WMP for OS X ever did but anyway,it is a different issue.
Your comparison to AOL highlights something I was thinking. I remember the last time I installed AOL Instant Messenger, they also kindly installed the AOL Web Browser, which I certainly didn't want. How is having RealPlayer include Firefox any different? If I want RealPlayer I'll download RealPlayer, and if I want Firefox, I'll download Firefox. If I weren't a Firefox user I wouldn't be happy about my media player installing a superfluous web browser. It doesn't matter that you can choose not to install it, you've still increased the download size of already bloated software. I use Firefox, and I like it, and would love to see other people use it, but the way to encourage more use of Firefox is not to have it attach itself to unrelated software.
That said, I still think Apple is the best of the three.
Ah, yes, VC-1. It's supposed to be identical to WMV3 (aka WMV9), but isn't quite. Maybe the current WMV3 encoder produces valid VC-1 streams, but there are plenty of older WMV3 files out there which don't follow Microsoft's own spec. And the FFMpeg implementation (and hence the implementation in MPlayer, Xine, VLC, etc) isn't complete yet. It's improving at a rapid pace, but it's not there yet.If someone knows of a way to playback sorenson content under linux without resorting to wine running Quicktime please let me know.
mplayer