Real's Last Hoorah?
September 29, 2001 12:51 PM Subscribe
posted by RavinDave at 1:00 PM on September 29, 2001
posted by owillis at 1:05 PM on September 29, 2001
posted by chaz at 1:07 PM on September 29, 2001
It's not terribly old. But it points to the battle being waged not so much on desktops, but MS battling for larger server share.
posted by crasspastor at 1:09 PM on September 29, 2001
posted by starduck at 1:23 PM on September 29, 2001
I deleted all my other Reals, my WindowsMedia, my useless Yahoo player and even my precious Quicktime. I re-downloaded the basic Real, oh, at least nine times.
All to no avail.
There's no "uninstall" and all you get is an unworkable instruction to run "C:\ProgramFiles\Real\Real ONE Player\Setup\g2cln.exe".
Which I am unable to do as some ####### unfathomable "pathway" message appears.
For years I have not lived in such silence. Can anybody help?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:24 PM on September 29, 2001
The only someone I can think of would be ... OMG .... please *NOT* Time-Warner-AOL. Geeeez ... with M$ humping XP they might almost be forced in that direction. What a wretched thought. That's exactly how it's shaping up.
owillis -- I was having a good day until I read your message. ;)
posted by RavinDave at 1:27 PM on September 29, 2001
Real is about the only company with software that I hate as much as AOL's software. If only WMP were any better! Thank God for winamp.
posted by gd779 at 1:32 PM on September 29, 2001
My pet peeve is the Real "seek bar". It's about an inch long, or a couple hundred pixels. It never gets any bigger, unlike the MS one. It is easy enough to calculate how accurately you can seek and with streams of any length it's on the order of minutes. It can be nearly unusable.
It's clear that the server is their true business because their client software is shit. Of course, MS made mediaplayer worse going from 6.4 to 7.0, so maybe if Real can hang on a bit longer they won't have to get their act together.
posted by Wood at 1:33 PM on September 29, 2001
Yours is the type of problem I've experienced from Real that keeps me from using their product.
posted by bragadocchio at 2:06 PM on September 29, 2001
Can anyone tell I'm a college student?
posted by tweebiscuit at 2:23 PM on September 29, 2001
posted by tweebiscuit at 2:25 PM on September 29, 2001
posted by owillis at 2:27 PM on September 29, 2001
posted by Steven Den Beste at 2:29 PM on September 29, 2001
posted by Mossy at 2:34 PM on September 29, 2001
If Microsoft was still pushing Windows 98 right now, they'd be dead right now. Serves Real right for not trying harder.
DIE Real DIE.
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 2:39 PM on September 29, 2001
posted by holgate at 3:06 PM on September 29, 2001
Anyway, RealPlayer is one of the worst pieces of software ever written for either the Mac or Windows. The amount of code bloat in it alone is jaw-dropping; it crashes constantly in ways no other program has ever been able to accomplish; it tries to hijack your Internet settings away from all other programs; the amount of spying it does on its users is second to none. The only reason it (and RealNetworks itself) have survived this long is because it has had no competition. If you wanted streaming audio or video, you had no alternative. Now you do. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I'd tattoo Bill Gates's face on my arm before I'd give a penny to Real for anything. They absolutely deserve to go out of business; if only Microsoft is capable of crushing them, so be it.
posted by aaron at 4:53 PM on September 29, 2001
posted by ParisParamus at 4:56 PM on September 29, 2001
If it's cheaper than free, i'd like to see that...
posted by machaus at 5:09 PM on September 29, 2001
Of course the "quality" (snicker) of Quicktime streaming is about as high as the cost...
posted by owillis at 5:14 PM on September 29, 2001
But I think it's likely they'll stick around, if only due to their partnership/affiliation/largest-share-ownership of MusicNet, one of the two behemoths in the upcoming online music wars. (The other major player is pressplay, who will use the Windows Media format.)
posted by Marquis at 5:23 PM on September 29, 2001
Every time there's a MacWorld, or a Seybold, or some such event with a keynote from Messrs. Jobs and/or Schiller, I watch the streamed Quicktime webcast, and it's orders of magnitude clearer and more pleasant to watch/listen to than any RealVideo I've ever seen.
posted by toddshot at 5:37 PM on September 29, 2001
tweebiscuit's completely right about Winamp. I installed the newest version of WMV, but it just strikes me as way too pointlessly big. The old version is perfect for videos (mplayer2.exe) and Winamp is just the best application ever made for Windows. I just don't get why someone would want a music player to take up more than half of their screen...
posted by Laugh_track at 5:45 PM on September 29, 2001
No I don't work for them, but if you've got an 'always on' connection or are worried about privacy, I recommend it highly and use it religiously.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:58 PM on September 29, 2001
There are a lot of streaming services out there that use it anyway and I can't think of anyone that streams in more than one format simultaneously. For the most part it seems either/or, so if you want to listen to, say, WBGO you have to use Real. So I would have to download Real anyway.
If there were to be a problem with the company I think it would be that it's running out of cash/revenue. Maybe AOL is waiting just around the corner?
posted by mmarcos at 6:05 PM on September 29, 2001
Websites can be viewed with any browser, meaning the slide from a 3rd party company (netscape) into the grasp of Micrsoft's explorer was simple. All MS had to do was make a browser and bundle it.
Not so with everything else. For Real to be "netscaped", all RealMedia content would need to be re-encoded, which simply isn't possible to do without a major loss of quality and money.
MS's other problem? RealServer runs on every OS (except OSX) - Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows, etc. (as mentioned above) WiMP Server runs on, surprise, Windows.
Considering that Windows runs less than half the WWW servers on the net, MS can hardly boast an overwhelming lead in the server space.
posted by jragon at 6:52 PM on September 29, 2001
posted by mikel at 8:22 PM on September 29, 2001
The crappy feeds on QuickTime TV and Radio aren't because of less-able compression algorhythms. They're crappy because the video feeds are only about 25k and the audio is only about 8k, whether you're using a 2400 baud modem or a T3. I have no clue why Apple has them all throttled like that.
But I think it's likely they'll stick around, if only due to ... MusicNet...
Don't count on it, unless the record labels are willing to eat all the huge financial losses themselves that this little scheme is going to end up costing. Both Musicnet and Pressplay are doomed, because neither of them are going to allow you to play your music anywhere except on the computer you use to download them. Combine the complete inability to listen to the music anywhere but right in front of your screen, with the fact that even the music files on your one computer will be disabled at the end of every month, and NOBODY is going to pay money for that. I think those two outfits are either going to go down as two of the biggest business disasters in history, right up there with New Coke, unless they drastically loosen up their "digital rights policies" within a few months of launch.
posted by aaron at 10:50 PM on September 29, 2001
posted by Marquis at 11:30 PM on September 29, 2001
There are a lot of streaming services out there that use it anyway and I can't think of anyone that streams in more than one format simultaneously.CBC runs Radio One in three formats, but not anything else, and it's only the feed from the province of Toronto, so if you're in Japan and want to listen to the Sydney feed you're SOL.
posted by joeclark at 5:54 AM on September 30, 2001
(Note for non-Canucks - good resource from streaming TV and radio from a number of other countries as well, including BBC world, which Canuck though I am, makes me happy!)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:59 AM on September 30, 2001
posted by grabbingsand at 9:56 PM on September 30, 2001
Well, yeah, so does MP3 if you give it crappy bandwidth.
posted by kindall at 10:55 PM on September 30, 2001
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posted by holgate at 12:54 PM on September 29, 2001