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

Alternatives to Real Player in Linux

[Jeff Carr]

This may not be the best place to ask, but since I can't believe anyone on Slashdot would actually install anything by Real Networks, this is likely to be the most use we will get out of this article.

I refuse to install Real Player, and see Helix as just a wolf in sheeps clothing. What alternatives are there for listening to real audio streams in Linux. The only thing I miss about Windows is listening to the BBC with the Real Alternative codecs.

Re:Yea but if history tells me anything

[namityadav]

For RealPlayer in particular, they do seem to pay attention when people hate something that the current version is doing. Only after people start hating something. Maybe they should pay attention to people before they add/modify something

Re:Yea but if history tells me anything

[Ash Vince]

Only because their licensing agreement (or whatever they had) finished, and now they've jumped on the Windows Media Player bandwaggon. Unfortunately you are right, the BBC are now moving towards DRM'd WMV files.

But half the reason is fuckwitts like you. You bitch and moan about things Real did years ago despite the fact that they are now a much better choice than a lot of the alternatives. Although actually you do not realise that there is only one alternative to Real, and that is MS WMV. And before you counter this by spouting 8 million open source formats let me explain my answer.

Large corporations like the BBC who make money from producing content want to protect that content from unauthorised distribution. At present the two commercially established methods of doing this for both video and audio are WMV and RM. The key points in that sentence being:

Commercially established - This is important as no manager wants to bet on a product with no track record unless the ROI is far higher than if they went with established solution.

Both Audio and Video - If you have another solution that only does half of what you want it stands no chance. So the same streaming solution must deal with both in order to convince someone who produce both audio and video.

I know we would all like to see nothing but open formats like MP3 as far as the eye can see, but it is not going to happen. It's like wishing you lived in utopia and never going outside until you do. Until MS die a horrible death Real are the best alternative so we need to start encouraging companies to use it more often. Either that or we can give up on accessing streaming content from anything other than Windows.

I use Linux far more than I do windows nowadays and the Linux version of realplayer is one of the best video players available for linux. And more to the point it is available for Linux, unlike Quicktime or DRM'd WMV files. If anyone out there hasn't tried using the Linux version of realplayer I would recommend it as it doesn't suffer the same problems that effect the windows version.