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Media (Apple) Businesses Media Apple

RealOne Player for Mac OS X 37

Posted by pudge from the it-is-about-time dept.
JakiChan writes "Finally Mac OS X users can view stunning RealAudio and RealVideo streams. OmniWeb doesn't seem to like it, but IE and Moz appear to play embedded streams just fine." Be careful, it's a beta.
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RealOne Player for Mac OS X More

RealOne Player for Mac OS X

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  • Any speed advantage in the compression algorithms is unfortunately negated by the clunkiness, bugginess and general cancerware-infectedness of the player.
  • this must be some new usage of the word that I was not previously aware of.

  • "Stunning?" (Score:2, Informative)

    by 1010011010 ( 53039 )

    Oh, please. Real is not "stunning," and their software is annoying.

    • Re:"Stunning?" (Score:3, Informative)

      by Dark Paladin ( 116525 )
      I completely agree.

      I don't use real. Ever. I'm trying to remember the last time I had to use it - DivX:)/Mpeg4 is just as small, and looks much better. Most movie trailers are done as Quicktime. I think the last time I *had* to use the Real format was to view the Kingdom Hearts trailer (stupid Squaresoft).

      Real is just too annoying, between the "if you don't click the 50 billion options you'll be bugged every time you blink - oh, and we'll forget them later and take control of every friggin' media type on your computer! Thanks!", and the crappy video quality.

  • RealCrap (Score:2, Interesting)

    by billcopc ( 196330 )
    Before you mod me down as flamebait, just remember the last time you used Real. Didn't it just suck goats ? RealMedia is a flaky closed format whose only strength is low cpu usage. They never released a proper codec, instead forcing their retarded annoying player down users' throats. Real's time has passed, today's video of choice is DivX or even just good old Mpeg-1.

    And if you've even tried the RealOne player, it's the most intrusive player they've ever created. If anything, this is BAD news.
    • Yes I agree Real is not a very good codec and closed. But the same thing could be said about quicktime before Version 6 and the mp4 codec. It's a closed format which should not be supported because many people are not able to view it. Even now the Apple mp4 movies seem to need Quicktime and can't be played with another mp4 player!
      • Yes I agree Real is not a very good codec and closed. But the same thing could be said about quicktime before Version 6 and the mp4 codec.

        Except for the part about it being not very good. The Sorensen codecs (which is what everybody is really talking about when they complaing about QuickTime being proprietary) are the best low-bit-rate codecs out there, hands down. Proprietary isn't automatically bad.

        Stuff that's proprietary but good is okay (Sorensen). Stuff that's open but not as good can sometimes be okay, too (MPEG-4). Stuff that's open and sucks... sucks (DiVX). And stuff that's proprietary and sucks also sucks (Real).

        I'd draw a little ASCII-art graph, but I'm lazy.
  • why does anybody think they could need this crap-o player? I bet you can't even find the download link. Real should just bag it and go make junk for windoze. All these closed formats are a big pain in the ass. wtf is wrong with standards? Just stick with .mpg and live with it.
  • OSX has been out for what? close to 2 years? It has taken that long for Real to release a version of their player that doesn't require us to load it in classic, and it's still only Beta quality (or probably closer to pre-alpha quality, but, then again, they never get any better than that). I'm guessing it'll blow donkey balls just as much as previous versions.

    Bah, what a load of shit. Now if only half of my Futurama collection (note: I didn't encode it) wasn't in realvideo format, or if there was some easy way to convert them to a *SANE* format (read. doesn't require a fucked up media player full of spyware and advertising).

    Now, if they had a decent dev team, it might have been out there a just after OSX was released, and it might have become stable (dreaming), and it might have evolved into a DECENT format (impossible).

  • I know that Real video is terrible quality, and their pop-up ads are annoying, but I personally am thrilled by this announcement. You see, I am a Survivor junkie, and all the video from the show on the CBS web site is in Real format. Next season, I can watch clips of Bickering Idiots in Paradise without firing up IE for Classic, and that makes me and my Finder happy. Hey, at least it's not Windows Media Player.
  • about this player

    downsides:
    The RM format continues to blow

    upsides:
    - full screen playback is smooth
    - skipping around the file (to different times) is perfectly smooth, snapping there instantly, rather than trying to rebuffer the whole damn file
    - no ads (at least in the beta)
    - doesn't try to hijack all your file formats... i actually had to tell Finder to use .RM as a RealOne file extension!
    - no other crap all over the place, its JUST the RealOne player
    • oh, and while its Beta, i haven't had any crashes or other such things one associates with 'Beta'... it is a pretty quick and snappy app. Please TRY things before you just start go bashing them.

      Yes, Real took WAY too long to release this, but hey, its out now, do download it and try it out!
      • Let's see now... I think I have a couple more downsides that may only be specific to me for whatever reason:
      • Plugin not recognized in Mozilla
      • IE errors when plugin loads

      Stunning indeed.

  • Like it or not, there are a lot of websites that use
    Real exclusively. For example MLB. I love to listen to baseball games and now I can without using the flacky classic player. Plus this version is great: a single file, no installing required, no ads, and it is very fast. I have been cursing Real for the last two years, now they have earned a BJ, line up and lets get "Real"
    • Have to agree. Most of the news sites I visit use Real and little else. (The CBC abandoned QuickTime a while ago, the swine.)

      And beta or not, it's playing very nicely with the other children. The frame rate is quite nice on this old Wallstreet, and the sound quality is fine. (Good enough that a barking dog in one news story got my black lab yapping for a good five minutes, anyway.)

      My real beef is that most of the clients I develop for insist on it ... or, worse, WMP. Without OS X tools for generating those formats, I'm still stuck with OS 9 on my system for the foreseeable.
  • Considering what I've seen of RealPlayer in the past on classic MacOS and Windows, I was VERY surprised to see a clean, minimalist interface that rival's QuickTime's, not to mention WMP for X. Those annoying 'channels' are gone, there's no button to press for a Pro version(admittedly, there isn't one right now), and it actually launches pretty quick. It's a single, native application that you can drag wherever you want it, and there's no .DLL's, like the Classic version.

    Admittedly, I usually use RealPlayer very little; song previews on Amazon and the odd video file on LimeWire are usually it. But the experience is so improved, that I won't hesitate to use it on other web sites.
  • I very much prefer my Quicktime player, but this Real beta opens a lot of content to OS X users.

    At least Real is nice enough to support most OS platforms. That's more than I can say for Brand M and Brand A, which ignore Linux.

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