rts008's Journal: Cool stuff to try...

"Re:Oh good, RealPlayer
(Score:3, Informative)
by martin-boundary (547041) Alter Relationship on Saturday October 06, @11:31PM (#20885099)
The Realplayer format is actually pretty decent compression wise. Of course, you should never use the standard realplayer viewing software for this. The best method I know uses MPlayer:

1) Open a terminal and type the following:
mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile dirk.ra rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/comedy/wed1830.ra

2) Wait about 30 seconds, then open another terminal and play the file dirk.ra from disk while it's still downloading:
mplayer dirk.ra

This has two benefits: you can put the stream in your collection (maybe convert to ogg later etc), and you won't get the annoying buffering pauses.

This method also works with realvideo files, and wmv urls (mms://) if you want to save those types of movies. Finally, note that MPlayer lets you skip around an audio or video file, even if the file says you can't fast forward in other GUI oriented video players."

Sweet!