RealPlayer 11 Is a Real Rip Contender

rishimathew writes to tell us TechNewsWorld is reporting that the new RealPlayer 11, not even out of beta yet, has a lot of great new features including the ability to easily rip streaming videos from sites like YouTube, Revver, and Heavy.com. "With the release of RealPlayer 11, the company is boldly moving into another dicey realm: ripping streaming video. Sure, there are lots of means out there to capture video from sites like YouTube Latest News about YouTube, Revver, Heavy.com and such. There are programs like WM Recorder (US$49.95) and Replay A/V ($49.95), as well as Web sites like Keepvid.com and Mozilla Latest News about Mozilla Foundation Firefox add-ons like VideoDownloader. I've tried some of them. Few, though, can match the slick ease of use of RealPlayer 11 -- and it isn't even out of beta yet."

Comments

What's the second generation of YouTube video?

[rueger]

Oh boy, now instead of mediocre YouTube video quality, we can enjoy second or even third generation copies of bad video of frat boys and drunks.....

If it's from Real I won't use it.

[casualsax3]

It's unfortunate, but I'm among those users so horribly scarred by Real so long ago that I'll just never use another product by them. I think it's the name - it just makes me nauseous now. It could be the best app on the planet - but unless they change the name I just won't go near it. End of story.

Re:If it's from Real I won't use it.

[MMC Monster]

I used RealOne player as my sole audio player for quite some time. Once it was set up, it worked quite well. (The setup was a b!tch, though). I made the mistake of downloading version 2 when it was available. It was definitely a downgrade rather than an upgrade, and I did go back to version one for a while. I finally realized that I wanted to use a player that respected me, and started using winamp.

(Of course, now I'm using amarok, but that's another story...)

Re:If it's from Real I won't use it.

[Tsiangkun]

me too. I don't use applications that are on version 11, and tout not taking over all my multimedia files as a feature. Give me a break, VERSION 11 !. This company deserves no love or sympathy. They already demonstrated how much respect they have for their users with the previous slew of shitty releases.

And the company are still die-hard spammers, no?

[seebs]

So, back in the day, Real spammed. A lot. They spammed constantly, they spammed everybody (like IETF role accounts), and they did so unrepentantly, with forged addresses in the headers and everything.

Has anything changed?

I somehow don't think so.

Crapware?

[TechwoIf]

Does it still load a ton of unless features and hides settings to turn off most of the undesirable ones? Last time I used it, it hog most of the system resources and did nearly everything but played the video.

I haven't read the fine article

[LordSnooty]

Yay, so now I can convert streaming video in one proprietary format into another local storage proprietary format? Joy.

Re:Yea but if history tells me anything

[DustyShadow]

Like I said, their reputation has already been ruined. What website uses real media these days anyways? I've gotten by this long without it. There are too many random media players out there. I don't need another. If Real wants to get anywhere, they should just change their name.

RealPlayer.... Isn't that a virus?

[MarkToronto]

I treat RealPlayer like a virus or mal ware. Everytime some jackass installs it on my computer I immediately get rid of it. That and Adobe Reader. Down with bloated software !!!

Re:Yea but if history tells me anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Like any virus: "installation was trouble-free".

So how well worked the uninstall?

Re:Yea but if history tells me anything

[Ecuador]

I 've also had horrible experience with Real Player in the past.

Once, I really needed to install it for a course. The professor was ingenious enough to have notes in some streaming format that required Real Player (real alternative couldn't handle it). Instead of setting up something like a VM for it, I was in a hurry so reluctantly decided to give Real Player another try (don't remember which version, it was around 2004). Despite my previous bad experiences I was unprepared for what awaited, as Real Player for some reason assumed that everybody had Windows Media Player installed and that it could hijack it as it pleased. I, of course, did not have Windows Media Player, I had replaced it completely with Media Player Classic. So, the installation crashed halfway through. It left me with a system whose registry was full of Real's (failed) hijacks, a system on which trying to launch a media file resulted in a call to mplayerc with some unrecognised command line options and a few error popups. Of course no automatic uninstallation was possible - the installer crashed before creating that.

For me, Real is up there with Sirius Cypernetics in the all-time hall of shame, and there is no way I will ever trust their products again in an unprotected (i.e. non-vm) environment.

Re:Yea but if history tells me anything

[Tsiangkun]

Oh cool, "not fucking up my computer" is a new feature in
VERSION 11 !

I think it is great that you can give people second chances,
and third, and fourth, and fifth, and sixth, and seventh, and eighth
and ninth and tenth chances too . . .
but really don't you see the pattern here ?

Real's reputation is horrible, and they deserve to
have a horrible reputation. They have been a shitty
company.

I don't do business with shitty companies like Adaptec, SONY, and Real.

Re:Change in tactics?

[evilviper]

Yes, that's why it's news... The sheer irony of it all.

If Real would have endorsed or adopted such copying capabilities into their player circa 2000, they might have had a chance of staying relevant through the years. Now, when there are hundreds of other programs that can easily do the same thing, it's not even a notable feature, except for the ironic aspect.

Re:Holy Fucking Slashvertisment, Batman!

[fm6]

Not only a proprietary format, but Real has always been very aggressive about going after people who try to interoperate without paying for the privilege. Which makes the fancy ripping features of RP 11 just a little ironic.