Real Announces Helix Grant Winners

elaineg writes "We're happy to announce the 2003 Helix Community Grant Program winners for development of open source projects on Helix. They are to UC Santa Barbara for providing robust multicast support in Helix, the Justin Karneges and Ulrich Staudinger at the Jabber Foundation for Jabber/Helix integration, Robert Kaye at MusicBrainz for integrated metadata cleanup in the Helix DNA Client, Jesse Schell at Carnegie Mellon University for integrating the Panda3D game and simulation engine with Helix, and the Xiph.org Foundation for further R&D and support of Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora codecs, including Helix DNA platform integration. More details can be found in the press release. Also, in vaguely related news, we've released Milestone 2 of the Helix Player for Linux." Helix styles itself as "the first open multi-format platform for digital media creation, delivery and playback", and has been created by Real Networks.

Just wanted to remind people....

[herrvinny]

...about the prevailing consensus [slashdot.org] about Real [real.com] on /.

By the way, here's the /. article about the launch of the Helix player contest [slashdot.org].

Let me be the first to say

[Anonymous Coward]

How much helix sucks. I just downloaded the player for Win32 and attempted to play an MP3 stream which is played flawlessly by Winamp, iTunes, WinMP, and XMMS. Helix played it full of chirps, like it was a bad MP3 from Usenet circa 1993, and to top it off it stopped to do a "Buffering..."

I can't make this up.

Re:Helix Player milestone 2

[DA-MAN]

Here is the direct link for the download!

http://forms.helixcommunity.org/helixdnaclient/ [helixcommunity.org]

Here is a quick tutorial on making an rpm of it.
http://fedoranews.org/tchung/helixplayer/ [fedoranews.org]

And since there is no Windows version of the HelixPlayer, here is the link to the RealOne Player:

http://www.realone.com/R/RC.012004realhome_1_1_2_1 _1_2.ecomm...R/forms.real.com/real/realone/realone .html?beta_bypass=true&bbits=true&type=dlrhap_bb&& pp=home&src=012004realhome_1_1_2_1_1_2 [realone.com]

Whither Ogg Theora?

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

I'm beginning to think Xiph may fade and disappear at this rate. The Theora mailing lists appear to be dead, there've been no 'Ogg Traffic [vorbis.com]' updates for a couple of months, and Theora's still at "Alpha 2" half-a-year after it was originally scheduled to be "finished"....

I'd played with the alphas and liked the video and sound quality. Seemed like a really promising format, so hopefully they won't let Theora languish and will use some of the grant money to get back to work on it, but I wouldn't hold my breath...

Re:What is this crap?

[brain159]

Immediately underneath their blue cross-bar under their tab navigation stuff, at the right, are the magic words "Free RealOne Player".

If you look closely in the Preferences dialog you can also disable the "check for new messages" junk which is also a major source of pissing-everyone-off.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Duncan Howard]

Ok, I understand what you were downloading. Splay and helixplay are "sample" applications. They are provided with the Helix DNA client source to provide developers with examples of how to work with client core. I thought your were talking about the GTK Linux player (http://player.helixcommunity.org), which has not been ported to Windows.

Re:They should have more screenshots.

[rgammon_real]

The UI is written in glade [gnome.org], and the helix engine is wrapped in a GtkWidget-based GObject.

This makes it easy to create your own UI or even custom player

UI feedback is welcome on the users mailing list, [e-mail], which you can subscribe to on https://player.helixcommunity.org [helixcommunity.org].

Re:Helix Player milestone 2

[rgammon_real]

DR5 (Developer Release 5) is a September 22, 2003 release of the client sample players, splay (no gui -- video window only), and helixplay (cross platform basic gui, uses motif on linux).

It does not include the hxplay, the gtk-based linux player.

You should register on helixcommunity.org, as that gives you access to the web support forums, mailing lists, and issue tracker.

But, if you insist on using a build from the nightly builds [helixcommunity.org] download page, your best bet would be Table "Tarball for 01/15/04", row "linux-2.2-libc6-gcc32-i586" column "HelixPlayer"

Re:Whither Ogg Theora?

[marshall_j]

The milstones [helixcommunity.org] for the Helix player suggest that support for Theora will be included as at milestone 4 - june 2004.

Quote:

Media Types Supported:

• All modern RV and RA codecs (RV10, RA10, RV9, RV8, RA8, RVG2, RV7)
• MPEG4 enabled (codec not bundled)
• MP3, H.263, G2 Audio, Ogg Vorbis, SDP
• Full SMIL 2.0 Support
• AIFF, wav, au, RealText, Flash, RealPix
• Ogg Theora Support

Re:Totally Lost

[Compenguin]

I got the binary installer, but what's confusing me is that the Release Notes [helixcommunity.org] say the source is availible but on the download page all I see are "hxplay-linux-2.2-libc6-gcc32-i586.bin" and "Test Plans." I'd love to get at the source because some minor things are driving me nuts.

Re:Totally Lost

[rgammon_real]

The easiest way to get the source is here [helixcommunity.org].

You want the "01/21/04" table, "source" row, "HelixPlayer" column.

You should be able to build this tarball by untarring it and typing make.

It'd also be a good idea to subscribe to the [e-mail] mailing list here [helixcommunity.org]

You can also ask questions on irc.helixcommunity.org channel #player if you have feedback, or need a hand with the build system.

Hope to see you on the mailing lists!

Re:Call me a skeptic, but Real...

[rgammon_real]

I'd also add that the news page talks a lot about how helix is being used by our partners. Worth a read! https://www.helixcommunity.org/ [helixcommunity.org]

To name the top few, in order of appearance:

• RealPlayer on the Nokia 6620 [nokia.com]
• Time Warner Cable using helix to support the Road Runner high-speed data service [realnetworks.com]
• Integration with IBM WebSphere [realnetworks.com]

Re:Call me a skeptic, but Real...

[kforeman]

Guys, its really simple. Over 65% of our revenue now comes from consumer content services like RealOne SuperPass (content from CNN, ABCNEWS, Major League Baseball, etc) and Rhaposdy (streaming music service) This business model has allowed us to build great free(gratis) and open source (libre) software products, like the Helix Player. Kevin Foreman GM, Helix, RealNetworks

Re:What is this crap?

[kforeman]

We are building the industry's best Linux and open source media player. Yes, we haven't open source our RealAudio and RealVideo codecs because we can't. We don't own all of the IP inside of those codecs. However, the Helix Player with Ogg and SMIL support are 100% open source. Let me say that again. 100% open source. We are pleased to be working with the open source community to finally standardize on a legitimate media player that plays all formats, even those that are not open, like MP3, MPEG4, Flash, RealVideo 10, RealAudio 10, etc. Take Milestone 2 for a run at www.helixcommunity.org. Kevin Foreman GM Helix, RealNetworks

Re:What the?

[waxed]

Even if RealNetworks wanted to open up the codecs completely (not to say they don't), they couldn't; some chunks of code inside the codecs are not RealNetworks property. There are technologies utilized in the codecs that are owned, copyrighted and patented by third parties (Intel, Sony, etc.) and licensed and built upon by RealNetworks. RealNetworks almost certainly does not have their permission to release the code they don't actually own.

Re:Whither Ogg Theora?

[vikman]

Actually, Theora support in Helix Player is almost ready :) Look for it in a nightly build soon. The milestone schedule will change to show it when it gets in. Thanks to the support of our users and community, there are somethings that have gone faster than expected within the project.

Real is NOT a software company

[brrrrrr]

Just a small comment, though most people know real from the realplayer and helixserver, Real is primarily a content-broker. Their players support their business to buy and sell content to the likes of BT and DT. To me it therefore seems that want to move (part) the SW business (the development of which is a cost-centre) to the outside world, thereby increasing their overall operating margins.

I think this is a smart way to work (from a business point of view) but ethically questionable.