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Helix Player and RealPlayer 10 Released
Posted by
michael
on Tue Aug 03, 2004 11:05 AM
from the get-your-drm-on dept.
from the get-your-drm-on dept.
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."
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Good news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good news (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Showstopper question (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:No Ads Now makes is alright? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't you wait till they do, and stop using it then?
As it is, you are providing them no incentive to correct their past mistakes.
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Re:Good news (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Good news (Score:5, Informative)
As for Real themselves, I kinda like what they are doing now, but old grudges die hard. I am torn between wanting to support people doing the right thing and feeling they haven't been punished nowhere near enough for past things yet.
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THERE ARE NO 503 ERRORS!! QUIT SPREADING LIES!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:THERE ARE NO 503 ERRORS!! QUIT SPREADING LIES!! (Score:5, Funny)
Vote CmdrTaco for Slashdot Information Minister in '04.
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Re:Why is this forcing me to use IE (Score:4, Insightful)
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Helix! (Score:3, Interesting)
Could this be the beginning of a multimedia framework for GNU/Linux?
excellent! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:excellent! (Score:5, Informative)
The effect is: whatever I am listening to comes out completely garbled. I have to terminate and restart Xine.
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Re:excellent! (Score:5, Informative)
Also support for playing Real media formats in Xine/mplayer still isn't quite as reliable as the real thing. Not to mention the browser plugin support. Finally Xine/mplayer can be a bitch to install.
I like what Real's doing. RealPlayer 10 is like the RealPlayer 1.0 that never was.
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Re:excellent! (Score:4, Informative)
I love mplayer but of all the formats it supports, Real is perhaps the worst.
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Let me know when EFF clears Xine.... (Score:5, Insightful)
How is Linux suppose to be ready for the desktop if developers/users continue with 'patents be damned' attitude?
Xine and MPlayer aren't legal in many major markets. That rules them out for many of us.
Helix is legal and backed by RealNetworks legal department.
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Re:Let me know when EFF clears Xine.... (Score:4, Insightful)
applying your logic, how can Windows be ready for the desktop when a huge fraction of users have illegal copies of Windows, Office and other software?
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Re:Let me know when EFF clears Xine.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I would bet it's probably impossible to write *any* software which does not violate patents that have been given out and for every valid patent there's probably 1000 invalid ones.
These being the conditions, it's much better to ignore the broken system, that way *if* you ever get sued and *if* you loose, you won't have to pay tripple damages.
Not to mention that most of the world does not care about software patents. Only one country cares with 1/12th of the population on the planet. Worse, probably only 0.1% of that country would actually benefit or want software patents.
So, only about 1/12000 of the worlds population cares about software patents. They just happen to also be among the richest and most powerful and manage to buy ridiculous laws and "free trade agreements".
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Wrong ... (Score:5, Informative)
That's all.
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Re:excellent! (Score:4, Informative)
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Neat. (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:Neat. (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you actually tried HelixPlayer, or the RealPlayer for Linux? They are, in fact, very nice, with simple clean minimalist interfaces using GTK. No ugly skinning, no bizarre file selection dialogs (just plain GTK file selection dialogs), no relying on keyboard shortcuts.
I like Mplayer, and I use it a lot, but HelixPlayer really is very nice, and I'm using it more and more. Don't knock it until you've tried it. Real seems to have turned a corner here and gone open source. HelixPlayer is a great open source project, and the RealPlayer based on it is not the intrusive email collecting mess that one used to associate with Real.
I know many here hate Real, and it's understandable given their previous efforts, but they do seem to have changed, and I think they're worthy of a second chance here... now if only they'd free up their codec...
Jedidiah.
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First Post (Score:4, Funny)
features (Score:3, Informative)
Spyware (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spyware (Score:5, Insightful)
And just how long do you think that they would get away with that in an open-source project?
K
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RealPlayer/Helix Relationship (Score:5, Informative)
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Oggabonafidemediaplayer (Score:3, Interesting)
Will reserve overall judgement to after the installation and operation of this, however.
We're so conflicted (Score:5, Funny)
Re:We're so conflicted (Score:4, Informative)
OTOH, I did just manage to re-install the RealOne Player that came with the machine, after a lot of stumbling around through pages that told me it was no longer supported. Now I can finally see their coverage of the Democratic Convention without waiting til 11 pm and hoping they rebroadcast it on TV.
Yes, google found lots of discussions of the problem. Even some suggestions for fixes. None of them worked. Eventually I stumbled across explanations of why this and a long list of other sites don't work. Maybe the next release will fix the problem.
But next time, I'll do a thorough google search before attempting to install anything of theirs. They seem to believe in letting their users do most of the testing. (And you might note that the download file has the string "beta" in its name.)
I might mention, though, that RealPlayer 10 comes with its own browser, and it's actually a fairly nice addition to my growing list of browsers. But even their own browser didn't show Comedy Central, or a number of other less important sites. Those it did show, worked much better than their older players.
(I've started seeing quite a lot of claims that the best coverage of the American election is at ComedyCentral.com, and I think I agree. If you really want to know what's going on, check them out. Unfortunately, they only post videos in Real format.)
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Re:We're so conflicted (Score:4, Funny)
Yes we can.
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Going against code. (Score:5, Insightful)
For christ's sake, you're all like one of those Windows users who will never touch Linux again because "it's all command line" or a Mac since "longhorn will have a 3D UI". Give the company another fucking shot, it's not every day we get a decent media player that supports Theora, Vorbis or their own codecs.
Re:Going against code. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Going against code. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Going against code. (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who had to dig through the site numerous times to install "hidden" versions, I can understand being annoyed at Real, but I can't understand holding it against them. I mean, their business model has always included selling a "premium" player. It seems to me that the fact that they were giving away a gratis version should mitigate the fact that it wasn't prominently linked on the front page of their site.
Should we be angry at department stores for not putting their brand-name clearance racks immediately inside the front door, or is it understandable that they make you walk past the regular-price goods in order to get to them?
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike the old Real. Making you dig through their site for a free version of their flagship product isn't one of them.
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RealPlayer 10 Does Play RealOne Files! (Score:5, Interesting)
"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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Getting the plugins to work? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Getting the plugins to work? (Score:5, Informative)
sort of like a java plugin install. works great for me.
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Re:Getting the plugins to work? (Score:4, Informative)
Make sure that you allow the BBC site to display popups. When you click on their link, javascript will try to open a popup. Mozilla blocked the popup for me until I allowed it. Plays fine! -jh
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First Impression (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone please put up a Debian-package !
Debian packages already started (Score:4, Informative)
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Poisened Waters (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
It doesn't work with Amazon's music clips (Score:5, Insightful)
Real's Linux gambit (Score:4, Interesting)
OPEN-SOURCE FLASH PLUGIN? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:wow I'm confused! (Score:5, Funny)
Two words: IBM.
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Re:wow I'm confused! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re:One question: Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I recently tried RealPlayer 10's beta for Linux. It's actually pretty slick (well, it was beta, so it was a bit unstable at times, but hey...) and plays Icecast streams in Ogg Vorbis pretty damn well (and you can get just plain Helix Player for that too, without RealVideo support). It was small, not too slow (Linux versions of RP are never ever slow!) and there's no trace of ads!
Yeah, Windows players are probably hell, but the *NIX players have the history of ruling, at least to small extent =)
But to be perfectly honest, the real reason I switched from RP8 to RP10beta was the support for XVideo extension and actual support for fullscreen playing. Makes watching some videos far less annoying when you don't need to maximize the window and fullscreen mode doesn't eat all processor. And, yuck, RP8 was a Motif app and RP10 uses GTK+2.
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Re:So..? (Score:4, Interesting)
People Like Me [tm] who have convinced our significant others that broadband is more important than cable or satellite television!
I'm quite happy [mintruth.com] 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 [airamericaradio.com] 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.
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