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RealPlayer 7 Beta for Linux 117

Posted by Hemos from the necessary-evil dept.
Dobromir Montauk wrote to us to say that Real has released the new RealPlayer 7 beta for glibc 2.0. The installation seems to be nicer than the last one, with support of mime types amongst other improvements. Now, if it doesn't crash my browser, we'll be getting somewhere.
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RealPlayer 7 Beta for Linux More

RealPlayer 7 Beta for Linux

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  • MPEG-4 (Score:1)

    by volkris ( 694 )
    Does anyone know of any OS MPEG-4 projects out there? The MS asf format is usually nothing more than a bad implementatino of MPEG-4, and so it gets terrific compression to quality ratios... but there don't seem to be any true MPEG-4 software available.

    MPEG-4 was designed for streaming media, and looks great from what I have seen. We need more of the standards based development to compete with RealPlayer. I wish I could do it myself, but I have other ongoing projects.
  • Can anyone provide a pointer to the the features of this player? Can it play any video codecs not currently available under linux. For example quicktime and mpeg4?
  • >With all that beta-, unstable- or developer-versions of various
    >programs around for Linux, one could think that there are almost no
    >final releases.

    The term "Final release" is nothing but a scam that pretty much has it's origins in the Windows (especially the Share/Crippleware) world. There ain't no such thing as a "Final Release" of software unless something bad happens to whom or whatever produces it.
  • Synchronization didn't work with OSS commercial in their last release (1997). Since my soundcard only works with OSS commercial this is an issue, but since my ethernet access was disabled for running Linux in a Microsoft shop, it would be nice to know if their 2000 release functions under OSS commercial before the 7 meg download finishes.
  • I have submitted a report to RealNetworks.
    Hopefully, they will get back to me on the problem.

    Fialar
  • On my system, rpnp.so, when placed in $HOME/.netscape/plugins (or system-wide in /usr/lib/netscape/plugins) makes Netscape die before it even begins.

    ldd /usr/local/RealPlayer7/rpnp.so
    libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40043000)
    /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000)

    I'm running Debian potato, with libc v2.1.3-6.

    Anyone else having this problem? Is there a workaround?

    Fialar
  • I agree with munged "antispam" email addresses being lame. Here's a few effective weapons against spam, especially when used in conjunction with eachother:

    Create a "throwaway" account with a name familiar with each forum with the command:

    adduser ;passwd

    and add a .forward file in that account's home directory with your permanent email address.

    So, maybe in a month you will get a piece of spam. Look at the headers and see what server connected to your localhost. Add the following line in your ipchains to ban them:

    ipchains -A input -p tcp -i ppp0 -s -j DENY

    Put a -l at the end if you want to log future attempts.
  • It is another process!
    What the hell are you saying Bob?
    Real Network give us they new player and
    you say that it will crash?
    Come on.
    If you dont like, dont use it!
    I do, and thanks RN!
    Oliver
  • ASX is a text format which is a glorified URL list, pointing to mms://... streams (Microsoft's proprietary protocol), and ASF files.

    RealPlayer's equivalent to ASX is SMIL, which is a W3C Recommendation, and is usually used to point to RTSP URLs (an IETF Proposed Standard, RFC 2326) and .rm files (or MP3 files, or RealPix, or GIF, or PNG, or JPEG, or whatever). .rm is a proprietary format, but we offer *lots* of standard alternatives.

  • In the Mac and Windows world, QuickTime tends to be the best media player option. It has a simple design and it isn't trying to suck you into any portal.

    Perhaps with Apple releasing MacOS X, they'll make and intel linux port of QuickTime. The market is waiting for a good solution. Maybe using RealPlayer for linux is a good way to say "Apple, we need a linux media player!"
  • Ack! Why is it that I seem to write "Octance" all the time? Sorry, it is a common typo I make.

    Cheers.
    --Ivan, weenie NT4 user: bite me!
  • Is it significant that the Real server that hosts the page is called proforma.real.com? Methinks mebbe they're not altogether sincere. Or maybe this Tootsie Roll pop is affecting me too much. :-)
  • Why does it only associate mime types in KDE? It would be nice if it did Gnome, too, plus Netscape, if it's possible. It probably is. Weird.
  • Arggh, I had a nice long comment all typed out and Mozilla crashed. Oh well, try again.
    I have windows and Linux RealPlayer on machined next to each other so we can compare the two.

    The installer (and later on, RealPlayer) seems to want to bind itself to every file extension the developers could think of at the moment of release.

    Yeah, see, there is this option during the install to NOT associate itself with all the file types. Same with Linux, you can choose not to install it in your mime.types.

    Then, it loads a memory-hogging piece of itself to load every time you start the OS, which newbies don't know how to get rid of (or probably don't even notice).

    OK, there is this option in the preferences menu to turn this off. don't know what a preferences menu is? Well, try looking around the applications menues, you should be able to find it. Still don't know, well try looking in the "Common Questions" section of the help menu, it is listed there how to turn it off. Still don't know? OK, pick up your computer and throw it out the window, you are truly too stupid to own a computer. Linux doesn't have this.

    It attempts to bombard you with ads.

    Hmmm...uhh...??? What ads? I just looked around at a few different realmedia streams from the Real.com site, no ads. Been using RealPlayer for several years, no ads. Are you talking about that useless content panel? Uhh, well I turn that off, it is useless after all. Don't know how to turn it off? See above.

    To download the free version on the Realmedia site, you have to go through a maze of pages asking you to pay for the player.

    OK, lets go visit real.com and see if we can find the cheese at the end of the maze...OK, they have ads for their pay player at the top, not surprising, they are trying to make money after all. OK, lets scroll down a little, there is a Free Real player button we can click, OK, lets click that. Oh, those bastards, asking us to buy their player again, but wait, at the bottom there is a link "RealPlayer 7 Basic is our free player". Well lets click that. OK that is it, just have to fill out that stupid form every website makes you fill out now. Wow, had to go through 2 whole pages, that is a maze? I will give you that they shouldn't have the pay player at the top when you click the free player button.

    After Realmedia claimed to have fixed the "bugs" in the last version, I have seen a comment that RealPlayer quietly installs the dreaded Comet Cursor with it.

    Nope, they give you an option if you want to download the Comet Cursor. I chose not to, no Comet Curosr on my machine. Linux doesn't have this.

    So pretty much the only really annoying thing the Linux version is missing is the "Favorites" menu. Haven't used it enough to comment on the quality of the playback, but it looks OK so far.

  • Well, it's true that common sound & video system support across hardware platforms is in its' infancy on Linux (yes, I know great strides are being made, go help) BUT if Real's coders were any good it would not be a big hairy deal to compartmentalize hardware specific functions.
    What's annoying to me is that I couldn't download .rpms easily on my generic Win98 PC at work because the flippin' RealPlayer grabbed the extension association. I had to hack the registry to fix this, incidentally, since I couldn't modify their association in the usual fashion. I like to use the fat pipes at work to download stuff for my home linux boxen and sneakernet the .rpms home on zip disks, it's quick and easy during off-business hours.
    --Charlie
  • I'm happy that they are finally updating the player for Linux because the local radio stations in West Texas suck and I can listen to a few thousand others with Real. I'd like a program that is WMP compatible, too, but ya gets what ya pay for at times. :-)

    Overall, the Linux version is about the same as the Windows version, with an astounding omission for the Linux side: I can no longer save presets, and my old presets were not imported at all. Hmmm, not a good sign so far. Also, of course, several of the newer 'features' of Real are not supported yet. Those features seem to be push-advertising embedded in an audio stream. Since I usually minimize RealPlayer and just listen to the radio, why should I not be able to listen to any of GlobalMedia's stations outside Windows? Even more ironic, since GlobalMedia uses Linux to serve Real streams. *sigh* I feel so marginalized.

    BTW, if you look at some recent streaming-media stats, it looks like Real has about twice the number of clients downloaded as WMP, yet several of my favorite sites have converted to WMP from Real. They don't usually even include an alternate stream, just the WMP stream. HUH? If RealPlayer has twice the market penetration, why serve WMP?

    Of course, the answer was given a few posts ago: Microsoft is paying them to dump Real, while Real is charging for the privilege to serve RealAudio. Not too hard to see why the change of heart. Bottom line, folks! That's all bizfolks will notice. :-)
  • First of all, this doesn't work at all if you have a POP3 account--only if your local machine is getting mail via SMTP. Spammers don't connect right to YOUR machine when they spam you (unless you run a mail server).

    Secondly, it doesn't work if the spammer has a dynamic IP address (since you are denying the address he used the first time but he gets a new one the second time).

    Third, if you do this despite the above, make sur e you know how to read a mail header. For instance, if the spam has the From header "hotgrits@portman.com", don't block `nslookup portman.com`--that domain may not even exist. And if it does, the spam may not be from there. And don't necessarily block the SMTP server that handed the mail off to you, because it could be an innocent routing machine (although it could also be a clueless promiscuous relaying machine).

    In short, don't run out and implement this idea without knowing what it does.
    --
  • My boss decides that he wants me to add streaming to our site. Our web server runs NT (Hey! Don't look at me! I didn't install it!). Currently, I have two choices. Realmedia, whose server costs (lots?) of money, whose player I hate, who laughs at my privacy. Windows Media, whose server is free, whose player isn't so bad, who also laughs at my privacy.

    Shoutcast for streaming audio! And of course Quicktime..
    --

  • But the fact is, this is becoming more and more common, I think. Sites are going to WMP-only based content. Is Microsoft trying to undercut their competition again by bundling software with the OS? (And is the DoJ paying attention?) aggh...why does the DoJ have to get involved again. The government should not be involved in everything. If a consumer product pisses you off, don't buy it. If something like this happens, it's because of demand, and if enough people demand realmedia, they'll provide it. You're their customer and they do want to please you. The government can only slow down the advance of technology and/or make M$ more of a beast than it already is. Joe
  • DooD :// Izn't their a RPM available 2? -- /\/\00G00
  • Just to satisfy my own non-windows using
    curiosity, what the hell is comet cursor?
  • The intallation of the thing was excellant, Linux needs more programs that have an installation like that. The player itself isn't bad, it looks better than the old Real Player. The quality is the same for me, as I had no complaints about the last version. The only thing that really bugs me is I can't seem to view real audio streams taht come up in a pop-up window. For example, The Golith [sixflags.com] video, or any of the vidoes' on Cnn [cnn.com]. Just the stupid "Netscape Plugins" window pops up, telling me to download real player, which I already have installed! It's very annoying, and I'd love it if Real would add that support for the Unix's.
  • Or at least that they would say in the README file what libraries and versions the software needs. IT really stinks that they only say "Red Hat 6.0". And the player says "segmentation fault". Argh.
    --
  • I've spent a fair bit of time working with the UNIX versions of RealNetworks products. The Previous versions were very sad attempts at mimicing the MS versions. This looks very good.

    The Install went flawlessly for me on my FreeBSD box, and has been running with out skipping a beat since. It's nice to get some of the real content.

    The Video for me is very choppy. But the audio is amazing. I suppose I'll have to install RH6.1 and try it there...

  • While it's nice to see that Real is finally doing some work to support Linux, it's disappointing (though not surprising) to see that they only support ia32/Linux. Also, they stopped supporting the Xlib command line functions, i.e. you can't set the geometry from the command line anymore. This is extremely annoying, as it considerably increases the amount of manual work neccessary to view movies fullscreened.
  • What does "dino pretending" mean?

    Well, I'm glad I'm it. I've achieved my main purpose of losing karma, and made a point at the same time. Hoorah *pops open champagne*
  • G2 was Alpha. So I was basically coming from realplayer 5, which used %s.
  • This version is nice... doesn't SSSSSutter, or stop playing after about an hour, or have the GUI trouble that the last one had. You have to change the ~/.mailcap file to bla/blah/realplay %u, instead of %s as before to get it to work.
  • I was suspicious as soon as I saw that autoinstall pkg being offered; so I used rpm2tgz (from Slack) and did the install by hand. That way everything went where I wanted it, linked to the browser of my choice ...and Netscape didn't fire up in a privilged state. (also, it was easier than looking up the myrid rpm control options)

    -pea
  • Installed in a snap and worked fine once I remembered where the hardware volume control was on my I7.5K.

    But having developed for Quicktime 4 I've been hoping Apple will trounce with their own release, like, *today*. Quicktime plays .ram fine plus real streaming media, and in the Windows trojan horse implementation includes most of the rest of the a/v universe plus half the MacOS' toolbox.. it's an edifice. And the libraries let you do serious programming. Always thought of it as the real thing but this Realplayer seems to work well on .ram files anyway.

    Hope it is just Apple polishing up the BSD libraries.. and it all fits into the Game Plan for World Domination (tm) but idiotically it seems that you would have to install VMware (which is great in itself) to view the ouput of your Apple Darwin open source streaming server from the same machine. Repeat mantra: Let them find the bugs so we don't have to..
  • I can't connect from home at better than 26.6K (thanks, Bell Atlantic), and WMP streamed video absolutely blows - you get a slide-show effect (if you get any pictures at all). Real, from the same site, is normally fine which suggests that Real
    is better at lower bandwidths.

    WMP definitely takes longer to start and connect too.
  • If the DOJ were to become involved in the battle of the media players similar to the web browser battle, I'd have to laugh. I'm certainly not a Microsoft supporter, but I'd find it very ironic that the only two pieces of MS software I wish i had in Linux (IE and Media Player) would be the only ones specifically under fire from the government.


    B1ood
  • After reading your post I (being the curious idiot I am) attempted this, and it seems that there is a bug in the mp3 playback engine because it would play for about 10 seconds then cut out... but if you move the slider or progress or rewind the song it suddenly comes back for another 10 seconds or so. Despite this problem I'm not worried this is a VAST improvement over the G2 (beta?, alpha?) version I had: it looks good, it's solid and it can stream radio stations from Boston, and play my southpark videos flawlessly and with about the same cpu usage as xmms. Verdict: it's a go with me!!!!!!!
  • especially since you so concisely pointed out the exact things that I personally hate about Realplayer, I think it is fantastic that some of the larger Windows/Mac software makers are starting to pay attention to the Linux crowd.

    This will only help to spur competition, hopefully until something writes an open source player that reverse engineers the WMP and Real format, and plays 'em back without all the crap.

    =P

  • I'm having the same *#&#$% problem. The Realpayer itself is working but netscape is getting nowhere with it. Help appreciated
  • In the list of different download platforms it says "Redhat bla bla RPM" and "Redhat bla bla non-RPM" Seems a little strange to me, aren't this package for all Linux distros? Is this because Redhat wants some credit for cooperating with Real on this one? I am now talking about the download site you get to by clicking your way from www.real.com , not the one linked in the article.
  • I guess the G2 player never got out of beta. I never had any problems with it, and the installation was very cool.

  • rp7 (Score:1)

    by entzik ( 123738 )
    I just watched mtv news @200kbps. works like a charm.
  • I actually have the reverse problem, When I click on streaming media in my browser, it tries to dowload it. Real turns on, but doesn't play the file, any idea what I am doing wrong? I registered Real to play media files in the Netscape registry thingie...
  • Now if it just doesn't crash your browser? My browser never needed help crashing itself...As much as I liked Netscape releasing their browser for linux, it's not the most stable package in the world...
  • The installer can be told not to associate the files (at least it could last I installed it under win) and if you can't figure out how to get rid of the "quickstart" thingamajig, you probably don't care that it's there anyway.

    The ads and difficulty downloading the free version are VERY annoying, but they've gotta make money somehow, don't they?
  • I stuck rpnp.so in my /usr/lib/netscape/plugins and it's working great. I'm using Redhat 6.1 and Netscape 4.61. But then again maybe I'm just lucky... RealPlayer G2 worked for me when everyone else was having problems with it too. I even took a screen-shot [papillion.ne.us] of the plug-in in action since I've been in such a screen-shotty mood lately.
  • Yes and Yes. RealPlayer Plus will let you save a streamed file. If the file is served from a web server and not from RealServer, it can be downloaded with a web browser. The other alternative you have is the create a proggy to download the file using RTSP. Does one exit? As for converting to MP3, there are a number of utilities around for converting to WAV. The resulting WAV could then be converted to MP3, but be prepared for some degradation in quality...
  • I think if you did a fair side-by-side comparison at several different bitrates you would see that RealMedia is just as good or better than Windows ASF. You will also find that RealMedia handles bad connections, packet loss and slow connections MUCH better than ASF.

    I'd really like it if you would post a site that has encoded the same media in ASF and RM at the same bitrate such that the ASF looks noticeably better than the RM. I don't think such a site exists (unless you use intentionally used the completely wrong encoding options for RM-- like "talking heads" mode for some high-action video.)

  • Oops, I mean excellent player... :)
  • I haven't downloaded the new version yet, but the Real G2 beta for Linux was definitely not Motif: it looks like they wrote their own GUI toolkit for it.

    I agree it looks like crap, though. RealPlayer just doesn't have that much GUI (just a few menus and a preferences panel) so it would be easy to have both Motif and GTK versions of it. That's not where the majority of the code is.

  • At least in the Linux/x86 version...I hope they put them back for the final release. The bookmarks thingy has been replaced by a "Content" menu, which appears to be non-editable. Too bad. I found that very useful in G2/6.0. I had a nice little menu of radio stations and video feeds.

    Can someone tell me if they're also gone in the Macintosh and Windows versions?

    OTOH, it does seem to play video better than that last version, even at low data rates.

    New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

    /bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.

  • I installed the non-RPM version on my RedHat 6.0 box, and everything seems to work very well. The G2 beta would ping the CPU utilization on my 333mhz celeron box, but this RealPlayer7 beta is only taking up 1-2% of my CPU at most. Very nice.

    Real has obviously been working on this one for a very long time (hence the mention of glibc 2.0 in the docs), and it seems like they've gotten it right. The player doesn't have nearly as many options in the preferences dialog as the Windows version, and I've noticed a GUI glitch (the percent complete bar seems to go to infinity when playing a live stream source) already, but it is so much better than the old G2 beta.

    And for those who are concerned about Real's privacy protections, take a look at the latest Windows RealPlayer.. they have a many-tabbed dialog which discusses *everything* that could be in the slightest way privacy related, with full explanations and an opt-out for everything. It looks like the Linux version isn't quite as refined, but Real seems to be putting their heart in the right place on this one. I actually had a short email conversation with a person at Real who was involved with their privacy policy for Real7, and they really do seem to have gotten religion on this one.

  • Underneath the big headline of "RealPlayer for LINUX" people seem to have overlooked the fact that a beta for Solaris was also released.

    The list of new betas is:
    Solaris 2.6 (Sparc only)
    Solaris 2.7 (Sparc only)
    Red Hat Linux 6.0 (i386 only) RPM
    Red Hat Linux 6.0 (i386 only) non-RPM

    What I am sad to see is the lack of IRIX. I use SGIs at work, and RealPlayer 5.0 is just not cutting it. RealPlayer either can't support the formats or crashes.

    A couple of months from now, SGI will be moving toward Linux for their desktop boxes, so I guess I will have to wait 'til then.

    --Ivan, weenie NT4 user: bite me!
  • No, this is not entirely correct. My company is a *huge* SGI client. We have already been notified that the next versions of the O2 desktops wll be Linux boxes. Higher end machine (aka non-graphics) such as Origin and Octances, will remain IRIX, but the lower-level will be Linux.

    Why do you think that SGI is porting many things to Linux? Look at OpenGL and Inventor: all being ported to Linux.

    IRIX on the desktop is going away. Unless you happen to have an Octance on your desk! :)

    --Ivan, weenie NT4 user: bite me!
  • Actually, Microsofts main threat to their competition isn't that they bundle to player with their OS (although that's a good sized portion of it), it's that they actually PAY streaming media companies to switch to Windows media, in the form of actually purchasing boxes for them, installing them, paying for their bandwidth, and sending techs on site to troubleshoot.

    It that's not unfair and leveraging from one market to another, i don't know what is. I mean, what - you can either serve in RealMedia, make people download a player, and then go and buy the server software, or you can serve Windows media, and if your site is large enough, actually GET PAID to use it.

    Can't wait til some class action or something actually drains microsofts coffers a little bit so they have to once again compete on merit rather than just the fact that they have enough money to keep going and going and going long after their competition has gone bankrupt trying to compete with free and subsidized products.

    Another product subisidy of theirs, coincidentally, is Windows 2000. All those success stories you read in the ads, those are all basically paid for by microsoft, who sends in tons of techs to get Win2000 running, and doesn't charge a dime for the privelegde, aside from being able to say "HEY! This company had enough confidence in our software to switch."

    New strategy, i guess.
  • You could go with the QuickTime Streaming Server. Free server. Free clients. Sounds like a pretty good deal, so long as you're willing to cut all those pesty non-windows and non-macintosh boxes out of your viewership. But don't worry, they're only like 7 or 8% of the market, so it won't matter that much.

    Oops! Did I say that?
  • Why hasn't Real (or WMP) even been reverse engineered? Is it really all that secure or is it just that the guru-level hackers aren't interested in "streaming media"?

    If the second, look for sm to go the way of "push"...
    --
  • are the file associations your biggest gripe?

    Do you even use the file associations under linux? there is a way, but I haven't run into anyone who uses it yet, just because the amount of work it saves is (IMHO) miniscule.

    Why not install it and see? I'm getting RM files to play for the first time (older versions never liked my system). It really is an easy installation.
  • I'd sadly have to agree with the comments that WMP is better than Real. Using them both under windows, accessing WMP/Real alternate streams of the same content, WMP is smoother and also allows me to jump to forward positions in the stream - if I try that with Real I just get audio and the video never really restarts.

    However, since Linux is my platfom of choice at home, and I use Sun at work, I'm not happy with either solution. What I'd really prefer is a truly open solution that I can use anywhere, and that the open source community can tune to be the equal of any of the closed source commercail solutions.

    Rather than reinventing the wheel, I'd suggest that the MBone tools should be used as the basis of an open source streaming video solution. I've seen a version of vic available with H.263 support which covers dial-up speeds, H.261 is available from a couple of places including openh323, which covers > 64K bps speeds such as cable/ADSL, and for even higher speeds MPEG2 is obviously the preferred choice, with the Berkley CODEC being available.

  • With all that beta-, unstable- or developer-versions of various programs around for Linux, one could think that there are almost no final releases.
    Ok, we all know that with most of all programs even a beta-release is rock solid unless you do really obscure things with it.

    Nevertheless I sure hope, there will be a final-version of the RealPlayer 7.

    BTW: Why is it called "beta" and "final"? Shouldn't it be "beta" and "gamma"? =:-)

  • After Realmedia claimed to have fixed the "bugs" in the last version, I have seen a comment that RealPlayer quietly installs the dreaded Comet Cursor with it.

    If you follow BUGTRAQ, you've already seen this, but for the benefit of those who don't, the following URL leads to RealNetwork's response to this exact issue: http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/archive. pike?list=1&date=2000-03-08&msg=3.0.5.32.200003091 91004.00832cc0@mail.real.com [securityfocus.com]. For those not interested in following the link, the two essential bits of the RealNetwork response are:

    • "First to set the record straight, the version of Comet Cursor distributed with RealPlayer does NOT transmit GUIDs."
    • "In addition, it is very important to understand that selecting the RealPlayer version with Comet Cursor is entirely optional during the download process and that Comet Cursor's existence as part of some RealPlayer bundles is clearly disclosed when you download, along with links to Comet's privacy statement."

    No, I don't work for RealNetworks. Neither does my cat.

  • They stated that they were thinking of porting RealPlayer for Linux to PPC. Their reason for not having a port already is that they claimed that it would take a lot more than simply re-compiling their sources for a PPC.
  • "the controls don't work quite well (try double-sizing the window during playback .. still see video? I don't) and if you really want to nit-pick, try using the menu bar while your NumLock key is on"

    I just tried both things that you mentioned, and had no problems... It double-sized and kept playing nice and smoothly, and I double-sized by using the menu bar while my NumLock key was on.

    Adam
  • Thanks to RedHat, we now have closed-source applications using the development libc for Linux systems (glibc 2.0) instead of the stable branch. Considering that the stable branch is out, and seems quite good (I run it here under Slackware 7.0), why are they releasing it for glibc2.0? That's like putting out development patches for the 2.1.x kernels now that we're onto 2.2.x (and beyond).

    Sigh. At least they're not using a kernel bug this time. I just wish they'd have an LGPLed wrapper for the core so we could fix things like linking to outdated/unstable glibcs.
    ---
  • Hey! I want to use Mozilla with it!

    Seriously, though, at least in the Red Hat RPM they distributed, they seem to have hard-coded in the assumption that you're using Netscape. In fact, when you install the RPM, it tries to start Netscape and connect to the Real site (even though one usually is root for installing the RPM). Not cool...

    And there isn't apparently any place to indicate an alternate browser to be used...

  • Exactly.

    I'd like to add that Real Player (in general) has to be the most unstable piece of software I've ever used and RP7 doesn't ease up. I can watch one clip under Win2K (reading off a disk) before I have to close and reopen it. Why? If I play more than two clips in a row RP7 resets my computer!

    Or how about that annoying desynch if you watch realvideo for more than 2-3 minutes?

    You wanna know how Microsoft's going to win the streaming media war? By creating a non-obtrusive player that sits quiet until media is presented. A player that won't spam the user with ads, make the system unstable or preload on startup.

    Looks like real.com is just making it easier for them.

    Jay


    -- polish ccs mirror [prawda.pl]
  • Unless the quality of Real's streams increases vastly, you can pretty much write it off vs. Media Player.

    Windows Media Player streams are simply much smoother than anything else I've seen, although I don't have much experience with Quicktime streaming to compare them.

    Microsoft now has the best browser and the best streaming player. Unfortunately, I don't see Mozilla getting stable fast enough to really challenge IE, and there is certainly nothing to match Media Player on linux. :(

  • Can't you real networks guys get your act toghether and make a GUI in toolkit that doesn't look like shite.. Say GTK/QT. When Motif/netscape is no longer necesary because of Mozilla I hope I will never ever see one MOTIF app on my desktop again *ever*...

    Now if someone updated the look on MOTIF to something more modern that would maybe make the use of MOTIF apps atleast somewhat tolerable..

    What do you say lesstif guys?

  • Re:Realplayer (Score:3)

    by HeUnique ( 187 ) <hetz-home&cobol2java,com> on Monday March 13, 2000 @04:13AM (#1206678) Homepage
    huh?? I had previously a G2 (beta) player, and now I upgraded to the version 7 beta - the mailcap is perfect (with %u)

    So far, excellent later. Nice to see that the installation recognizes KDE and added the player to it (in the personal menu)

  • realplayer and debian (Score:3)

    by joey ( 315 ) <joey@kitenet.net> on Monday March 13, 2000 @09:21AM (#1206679) Homepage
    I'm the maintainer of the realplayer installer
    package in the contrib distribution of Debian. Just to forstall a flood of
    email, I'm writing to let people know that this version will *not* be
    supported by the installer until Real makes it available in some format
    other than a self-extracting program that must be run as root under
    X and requires user interaction to install. That's stupid, and I'm just not
    gonna go there. Once a rpm or (god forbid!) a tarball is available, the
    realplayer installer in unstable will be updated to use it.

    In the meantime, Debian folks who really need it can install it by hand.
    --

  • glibc 2.0 (Score:3)

    by ink ( 4325 ) on Monday March 13, 2000 @09:26AM (#1206680) Homepage
    Thanks to RedHat, we now have closed-source applications using the development libc for Linux systems (glibc 2.0)

    Sorry, but take a look at this:

    http://www.fsf.org/software/libc/libc.html [fsf.org]

    Glibc 2.0 was supposed to be a stable release; most everything added afterwards is either to fix bugs or to become more standards-compliant. RedHat isn't to blame anyway:

    [ink]# ldd `which realplay`
    /lib/libNoVersion.so.1 => /lib/libNoVersion.so.1 (0x40013000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4001b000)
    libXmu.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXmu.so.6 (0x4010e000)
    libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x40121000)
    libXt.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6 (0x4012d000)
    libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x40179000)
    libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x4021d000)
    libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x4023a000)
    libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x4023d000)
    /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
    libSM.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6 (0x4024e000)
    libICE.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6 (0x40257000)
    [ink]# ls -l /lib/libc.so.6
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Feb 22 10:17 /lib/libc.so.6 -> libc-2.1.2.so
    And, it uses 2.1 anyway (welcome to the wonderful world of SHARED LIBRARIES)

    The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.

  • Why the Celebration? (Score:3)

    by pen ( 7191 ) on Monday March 13, 2000 @03:40AM (#1206681)
    I'm not knowledgeable enough (nor do I run it often enough, yet) to install it. Can someone who uses RealPlayer under both Windows and Linux please post a comment and compare the two versions? If this thing is anything like the Windows version, I don't see why anyone is celebrating.

    The installer (and later on, RealPlayer) seems to want to bind itself to every file extension the developers could think of at the moment of release. Then, it loads a memory-hogging piece of itself to load every time you start the OS, which newbies don't know how to get rid of (or probably don't even notice). It attempts to bombard you with ads. To download the free version on the Realmedia site, you have to go through a maze of pages asking you to pay for the player. Not to mention all the privacy issues. After Realmedia claimed to have fixed the "bugs" in the last version, I have seen a comment that RealPlayer quietly installs the dreaded Comet Cursor with it.

    If the Linux version is anything like the Windows version, I don't see why everyone is so happy about this...

    --

  • Re:But is the content disappearing? (Score:3)

    by pen ( 7191 ) on Monday March 13, 2000 @03:54AM (#1206682)
    Well, I think that my story is pretty typical.

    My boss decides that he wants me to add streaming to our site. Our web server runs NT (Hey! Don't look at me! I didn't install it!). Currently, I have two choices. Realmedia, whose server costs (lots?) of money, whose player I hate, who laughs at my privacy. Windows Media, whose server is free, whose player isn't so bad, who also laughs at my privacy.

    If anyone can think of another choice, please let me know. I'll be very happy.

    --

  • Streaming for Everyone (Score:3)

    by szyzyg ( 7313 ) on Monday March 13, 2000 @04:50AM (#1206683)
    On all the forums and discussions on streaming media there seems to be a real (no pun intended) holy war going on between Real Server and Windows media services.

    Real may be available for more platforms than WMP which is often given as a reason for providing content in that format. But Windows media services is free and that's a big problem for everyone who doesn't have Windows or Mac.

    But - open source has an ace in this game - Icecast isn't the best technology - it's downright low tech - butif you're streaming audio then using icecast you can serve live content to WMP *and* Real player users as well as Xmms, winamp and all those other mp3 players.

    And it's free (icecast is, shoutcast costs 300$).

    So - remind all those people running windows media stations that ther is a 'better' solution out there. Better in that it offers a greater potential audience than either server.

    Now... If only RP7 would download faster I wouldn't be saying things like this during the download...

  • Re:Its already been done..... (Score:3)

    by Matthew Bafford ( 43849 ) on Monday March 13, 2000 @07:39AM (#1206684) Homepage

    You can already save your Real Audio with Streambox Ripper so I suppose you can say it has already been 'rev-enged' :)

    Except Streambox Ripper doesn't know much about the Real Audio protocol. It just hitches a ride using the DLLs that the Real's player uses.

    HTH,

    --Matthew

  • For Linux (glibc2.x), but not for me? (Score:3)

    by jcn ( 55250 ) on Monday March 13, 2000 @03:58AM (#1206685) Homepage Journal
    Guess I asked for it, when I decided against using buying hardware (+bundled software package from IBM), but I'd greatly appreciate it if people would not assume Linux == ix86.

    My GNU/Linux box is a PowerPC (ppc), and it runs Linux as well as glibc2.1, but why do I think `Package Foo for Linux' won't run over here?

    It may be quite a while until the ignorant lot get this, but we could do with a bit more enlightened view from /.

    Jan

    --
    Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
    www.xs4all.nl/~jantien [xs4all.nl] | www.lilypond.org [lilypond.org]

  • Its already been done..... (Score:3)

    by reality-bytes ( 119275 ) on Monday March 13, 2000 @06:01AM (#1206686) Homepage
    You can already save your Real Audio with Streambox [streambox.com] Ripper [streambox.com] so I suppose you can say it has already been 'rev-enged' :)

  • RealPlayer and UNIX (Score:4)

    by bjb ( 3050 ) on Monday March 13, 2000 @03:24AM (#1206687) Homepage Journal
    It's a shame that when we want streaming media on the web, we have a choice of Windows Media Player or RealPlayer. The first choice is obvious to anyone reading this message, but the second choice is the shame; while the players work, they just never seem to be nearly as good as they are on any other platform. I guess to be more descriptive, I've been using RealPlayer on Solaris for about two years now, and I've never been that impressed with the output, and the Linux version is pretty much on par here. The video isn't very good, the controls don't work quite well (try double-sizing the window during playback .. still see video? I don't) and if you really want to nit-pick, try using the menu bar while your NumLock key is on!

    I also have the two media players installed on a WinNT box. I really don't like all the flashy extra garbage that RealPlayer has put in to their application, and honestly I think that is making their player less appealing to me. You can turn it all off, but I still don't like the fact that I've got 5MB (or whatever) of useless binary on my drive for crap I'll never use (yet, I keep getting informed to upgrade to the latest version so I can get my news ticker! ooh!).

    Beta or not, I hope the media software for the UNIX world improves. That's my rant, and I'm sticking to it!

    --

  • I'd rather have Linux streaming .ASX files (Score:4)

    by RayChuang ( 10181 ) on Monday March 13, 2000 @04:26AM (#1206688)
    Folks,

    I think streaming .RA or .RAM Real files is not in the good idea department.

    Having played around with RealPlayer 7.0 beta for Windows 98, that program has way too many things running in the background in addition to streaming Real files. No thanks!

    Say what you want about Microsoft, but at least they got it right with Windows Media Player 6.4: it doesn't have things like channel selectors or advertisements running in the background streaming .ASX files. Also, by default .ASX files sound FAR better than .RA files on V.90 analog modem connections.

    In fact, it's actually far easier to get programming information on the .ASX file format than the Real .RA or .RAM format. Because of this, it will end up being quite a bit easier for someone to write a Linux client program that can stream .ASX files, and even possibly create .ASX files in a Linux-based streaming media server.

    If I were Microsoft right now, I'd make the .ASX file format specifications fully available, because this could put a kibosh on Real Networks.

  • Some first impressions. (Score:4)

    by handorf ( 29768 ) on Monday March 13, 2000 @04:03AM (#1206689)
    it's pretty good! installation was nice (using the non RPM version), and it went just fine, except for the fact that I wasn't installing as root so it couldn't add the helper files in /usr/local/bin that it wanted to. But that's ok, I'll fix it later.

    I Can watch RM files now!!! The earlier versions never worked for me at all. This one is very nice in comparison :-).

    To the guy worried about the file bindings, no, it doesn't screw anything up. I doubt it knows about the few file binding options you have under Linux. It seems to be very well behaved.

    Thanks, Real! It's finally usable and I for one really appreciate it!

    On another note, does anyone know what video codecs are included? Do we get the annoying Microsoft ones, too?

  • Alpha Beta Gamma Delta? (Score:4)

    by iCEBaLM ( 34905 ) on Monday March 13, 2000 @06:39AM (#1206690)
    In a press conference held today by Real Inc., Vice President of Marketing Seymour Butts stated "Only 10 months after our Real Player G2 Alpha for Linux was released we unveil Real Player 7 Beta for Linux!"

    "We have made great strides to bring our newest stats grab, er, player to Linux, and we hope to be well received in the Linux community."

    When asked why no stable player has been released for Linux since version 5, Mr. Butts resolves "Actually the beta is the final version, we just can't say that or else we'd have to support it."

    "Our next version of the Linux Real Player will be 8 Gamma, followed by 9 Delta, 10 Echo and continuing on like that. It's a pretty ingenious way to get out of supporting a product, don't you think? Our lawyers thought it up."

    -- iCEBaLM

  • But is the content disappearing? (Score:4)

    by Ears ( 71799 ) on Monday March 13, 2000 @03:25AM (#1206691) Homepage

    I downloaded the player this morning, and installed it---it's quite sweet. Works great with ESD, sounds very good. I'm quite pleased with it.

    But there's an odd trend I've noticed... When I went to listen to the live stream of my NPR station with my spiffy new player, it couldn't play it because it was for Windows Media Player only. Doh! I wrote them to tell them that this was pretty frustrating (especially since I'm pretty sure they also used to webcast for Real player).

    But the fact is, this is becoming more and more common, I think. Sites are going to WMP-only based content. Is Microsoft trying to undercut their competition again by bundling software with the OS? (And is the DoJ paying attention?)

  • Alternative streaming servers (Score:4)

    by MrPoopyPants ( 146504 ) on Monday March 13, 2000 @04:05AM (#1206692) Homepage
    There is shoutcast and icecast. (Try www.*.com for each or do a search.)

    We're using icecast on one of our Linux boxes at WMU to serve up the campus radio station (http://www.widr.org [widr.org]). It's streaming mp3 so you can use almost any client (xmms, mpg123, real, winamp, etc) to listen.

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