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Software Media Microsoft

Real's Reality 460

Posted by timothy from the best-wishes dept.
prostoalex writes "While Real Networks claims its market share and low profit numbers are the result of Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior, there are some alternative views. News.com has an article on Real's reality, which reveals many interesting practices that Real resorted to. "Although RealNetworks had already licensed Microsoft's formats for use in its media player, it didn't have Windows Media licenses for its server technology. Undeterred, the company found a way to essentially replicate the Windows Media code, trumpeting its new software as the Internet's first "universal" streaming system", says News.com." Read on for more.

"There's also an interesting conversation going on at Jogin.com, which started with this post from the author, basically a rant, describing how inconvenient and even hostile Real Player is. It would be like any other rant, except an employee of Real Networks replied with some insights into the company's wrongdoings and somewhat explained Real's undeterred hostility towards those who downloaded the free version of its player. Furthermore, a consultant, who used to work at Real Networks, replied, sharing some questionable practices Real engaged in, such as hiding a variety of "add-ons" at the bottom of the page, hoping that the user would not scroll down to un-check the selections, and then charging his credit card for add-ons when he signed up for paid version on Real One."
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Real's Reality More

Real's Reality

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  • What do... (Score:5, Funny)

    by andy55 ( 743992 ) * on Sunday March 07, 2004 @10:59PM (#8494985) Homepage

    Q: What do microsoft and RealNetworks have in common?
    A: It takes a HD format to remove their software.

    • Re:What do... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Hi_2k ( 567317 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:09PM (#8495077) Journal
      Thats not true at all. You can't uninstall evil [penny-arcade.com]

      • Re:What do... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by The Snowman ( 116231 ) * on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:38PM (#8495280)

        Wow, vintage Penny-Arcade :-)

        I had a friend whose company contracted for some proprietary software (this was in the BBS days, Stallman's free software was still only a myth, if that even). This thing installed data in unused portions of the boot sector. Even formatting and repartitioning the hard disk would not remove its data, which was primitive copy-protection/license data.

        So maybe the only way to uninstall this software was to burn the hard drive... who knows...

        • Re:What do... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Endive4Ever ( 742304 )
          Stallman's software wasn't a 'myth' back in the BBS days. I have a printed GNU Emacs manual written by Stallman that was publised in 1986. The difference is, back in 'those days' the UNIX people lived apart from us 'mere home computer' folks from their expensive UNIX workstations. Stallman's culture just comes at the modern computing world from a different starting point than the BBS'n folks. It was around then.

        • Re:What do... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by freeweed ( 309734 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @12:11AM (#8495469)
          This thing installed data in unused portions of the boot sector. Even formatting and repartitioning the hard disk would not remove its data, which was primitive copy-protection/license data.

          Isn't that what Intuit did not too long ago?

          Yes, it's tax time, and I'm on my yearly anti-Quicktax crusade :)

        • Re:What do... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by c4Ff3In3 4ddiC+ ( 661808 )
          This thing installed data in unused portions of the boot sector.
          That sounds like TurboTax.

        • Re:What do... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by leviramsey ( 248057 ) *

          Did fdisk /mbr work?

          • Re:What do... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by The Snowman ( 116231 ) *

            Did fdisk /mbr work?

            I do not know... this was a while ago, and my friend is, sadly, dead. Turns out he had diabetes but never saw an MD about the symptoms until it was too late, collapsed on the emergency room floor. They found this out during the autopsy. Anyway, back on subject, I do not know. He did say that uninstalling it the "proper way" worked, it undid the changes to the boot sector. But it also made changes to the original 720k floppy (yep, back in the day) so it would not install on a differen

          • Ok. I don't know this for sure, but I got a pretty good gut-feeling, since I can't recall ever hearing about that /mbr option before.

            fdisk /mbr is probably as well documented and mentioned (by Microsoft) as format /mbr. Which means none, zip, zero for any average user.

            I have been using third-party tools to install standard MBRs for years, not knowing of format /mbr until recently, which supposebly has been around for years.

            Try format /? on your favorite dos-prompt. See any /mbr mentioned? See any

    • Re:What do... (Score:5, Informative)

      by kommakazi ( 610098 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:36PM (#8495270)
      Not if you're using a Mac OS X, all you gotta do is delete the folder the player is installed in. This works for the free version anyways...It also (amazingly) works to copy a folder from one computer to another and it still functions.

      • Re:What do... (Score:5, Informative)

        by The Snowman ( 116231 ) * on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:45PM (#8495317)

        Not if you're using a Mac OS X, all you gotta do is delete the folder the player is installed in. This works for the free version anyways...It also (amazingly) works to copy a folder from one computer to another and it still functions.

        This is one thing the Mac does right -- a program's binaries and configuration data are all self-contained. No registry, no /etc. This has advantages. Of course it makes it easier to pirate software. I read here on Slashdot a year or so ago about a guy in Texas who witnessed a man walking into a CompUSA, hooking up his iPod, and downloading Mac Office over Firewire. Because everything is self-contained, all he had to do was drag and drop the "Office" folder and he was done.

        When I write software for Linux or for Windows, I try to do the same thing. My Windows software uses the "deprecated" INI files in the executable directory instead of the super-bloated registry, and I try to set up sensible defaults and make programs load from ~/etc if possible in Linux.

        • Re:What do... (Score:5, Informative)

          by kommakazi ( 610098 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @12:06AM (#8495436)
          Actually configuration data is generally not stored in the same place as the application...pre-OS X it was all stored in the "Preferences" folder in the System Folder which made it easy to find. Under OS X it's a little bit more tricky, user specific prefs are stored inside your ~/Library/Preferences, and system wide prefs in /Library/Preferences. Some apps also make their own .appconfig files in various places inside your home directory. Granted this still is pretty easy to figure out and removal of these files is a sinch since you can just drag them to the trash and delete them normalls.

        • Re:What do... (Score:5, Informative)

          by CTachyon ( 412849 ) <chronos AT chronos-tachyon DOT net> on Monday March 08, 2004 @12:26AM (#8495553) Homepage

          My Windows software uses the "deprecated" INI files in the executable directory instead of the super-bloated registry ...

          Eep. Stop right there, you're standing on a landmine. INI files on a modern system should be put in the per-user "Application Data" folder. You can retrieve its path using SHGetSpecialFolderPath [microsoft.com] (95/IE 4.0 or 98+) or SHGetFolderPath [microsoft.com] (98/IE 5.0 or 98SE+) using the CSIDL_APPDATA [microsoft.com] constant. If you've fail to do this, your app is currently giving ulcers to some innocent admin of WinNT-family boxes who now has to manually add extra NTFS permissions for the Everyone group to your app's install folder. Your app also doesn't work correctly with multiple users (all users share the same settings), under roaming profiles (settings are per-machine, not per-user), or running off a network drive (Ha! Like *your* app deserves chmod a+w on the Samba server!). As an added bonus, your app may stop working under XP SP2 (or after some Critical Update in the unspecified future) and almost certainly will be b0rked by the time Longhorn comes out (if MS isn't a completely lost cause, they'll have stopped making users Admin by default by that timeframe).

          • Re:What do... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by The Snowman ( 116231 ) *

            Eep. Stop right there, you're standing on a landmine. INI files on a modern system should be put in the per-user "Application Data" folder. You can retrieve its path using SHGetSpecialFolderPath (95/IE 4.0 or 98+) or SHGetFolderPath (98/IE 5.0 or 98SE+) using the CSIDL_APPDATA constant. If you've fail to do this, your app is currently giving ulcers to some innocent admin of WinNT-family boxes who now has to manually add extra NTFS permissions for the Everyone group to your app's install folder. Your app al

            • OT: Non-Multi-User Design Rant (Score:4, Insightful)

              by red floyd ( 220712 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @01:31AM (#8495873)
              This is halfway on topic, talking about crappy software. I hate it when software is not multi-user aware:

              Broderbund and Maxis are infamous for this. Both "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 15" and "The Sims" require you to run as Administrator.

              There is absolutely NO FUCKING REASON why any app -- except for certain system utilities (and games and typing tutors aren't those) -- should require Admin. It's fucking lazy sloppy programming.

        • Re:What do... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by IgnoramusMaximus ( 692000 )
          No registry, no /etc.

          Sir, I object to your characterisation of the /etc directory. It is there for a reason. What you describe is fine and dandy for games and assorted disposable desktop crapola but not so fine for most (serious) applications. Having a centralized (but easilly maintained and repaired) repository of configuration data, makes it easy to backup this critical part of the system and also allows for better control of access to it.

          Making remarks in the vain of "Let every application be a king of

          • Re:What do... (Score:3, Insightful)

            by The Snowman ( 116231 ) *

            Sir, I object to your characterisation of the /etc directory. It is there for a reason. What you describe is fine and dandy for games and assorted disposable desktop crapola but not so fine for most (serious) applications. Having a centralized (but easilly maintained and repaired) repository of configuration data, makes it easy to backup this critical part of the system and also allows for better control of access to it.

            I agree -- etc is a good idea, but so is having a self-contained application directo

    • Some nerve... (Score:5, Funny)

      by I Love this Company! ( 547598 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @12:04AM (#8495427)
      Hey, I don't appreciate all of this anti-Real Networks and anti-Microsoft senti...[BUFFERING 0.03%]

  • Sad.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tyir ( 622669 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:00PM (#8495003) Journal
    I know we are all REALLY sad about REAL's demise.. I think it is more to do with their annoying habits of putting themselves in the start menu, the quickstart, the system tray, and anywhere else they can get...
    • Seriously. I won't even have a Real plugin on my computer anymore. I think they're worse than most ad/spyware companies, MS included.

    • Re:Sad.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gid13 ( 620803 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:12PM (#8495099)
      The start menu is fine. Expected, in fact; I'd be bothered if it wasn't there. The desktop is fine, if I don't like it it's VERY easy to delete. Same with quickstart. The system tray is irritating, but there are many other programs that default to a memory-resident program. Not a huge deal when you can right click and disable.

      Where real starts to bother me is the registry entry that runs something every time you boot. And if you delete said registry entry, it replaces it the next time you run the program. It pisses me off when programs use my system resources without my knowledge for ANY reason, but I'm pretty sure this one is spyware, which is extra irritating.

      On the off chance that there are still people out there who need to hear this, do yourself a favour and use Media Player Classic and Real Alternative (and Quicktime Alternative) in Windows, or Mplayer in Linux.

      • Re:Sad.. (Score:5, Informative)

        by breon.halling ( 235909 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:46PM (#8495328)

        And here are some URLs:
        Real Alternative & Quicktime Alternative [hccnet.nl] (middle of the page)
        Media Player Classic [sourceforge.net] (again, middle of the page)

        Enjoy!

      • Re:Sad.. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by starm_ ( 573321 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:59PM (#8495399)
        everytime you boot!? Last time I checked(using regmon) Just the real player system tray program accesses the registry dozens of times every second.

        That's when real player is NOT running!!!
      • For another example of a piece of software bloating one's system with silent crap, take a look at iTunes for Windows. I was annoyed (but not particularly surprised) to find that after installation of this I had two services by the names of (IIRC) iPodService and iTunesHelper running. They're not all that large (1 - 3 MB between them), but they're there.

        All so that when some idiot plugs his iPod into his PC the thing will pop up iTunes or whatever and do something or other, and the idiot can exclaim "Wow

        • I can't see what's so wrong with this? I don't really think these services make any difference in system performance, and if this is what it takes for Apple to maintain their good user experience, then I think it's perfectly fine.

      • Re:Sad.. (Score:3, Informative)

        by PacoTaco ( 577292 )
        Where real starts to bother me is the registry entry that runs something every time you boot. And if you delete said registry entry, it replaces it the next time you run the program.

        You can usually leave the key in the Run section of the registry and just delete the value (the path to the program). A blank key won't do anything and won't throw any errors. Many applications only check for the existence of their keys and never realize that they're empty. I'm not sure about Real software, but this trick

  • Bloated (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mod_critical ( 699118 ) * on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:00PM (#8495004)

    I know why I don't use Real player anymore...

    Real Player used to be a simple piece of audio (then later video) playing software. Now its becomeiwng one of those applications that wants to dominate your system and do everything from playing media to making eggs. RealMessage Center? A constantly running tray icon? Asking me every 2 seconds if I _really_ want it to not be the default player for everything...

    RealNetworks might not be having troubles if they were able to produce significantly more advanced codecs and didn't resort to bloat. No innovation, no company, regardless of whether your player can polish my shoes or not.

    • Re:Bloated (Score:4, Interesting)

      by capz loc ( 752940 ) <capzlocNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:10PM (#8495083)
      As bloated and useless as it is, you have to respect Real for being one of the first major companies to release their software for Linux. They saw how they were easily forced out of the Windows market, so they saw an easy (in their minds) opportunity to gain market share where MS would dare not tread. But with all the all-in-one media players for Linux (Mplayer, xine, etc), Real has no niche in the Linux community. In addition, they have virtually no hope in their player being bundled in Linux distros, unless they decide to GPL it (not gonna happen).

      • Respect *just* for porting to Linux? Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:49PM (#8495348) Homepage
        As bloated and useless as it is, you have to respect Real for being one of the first major companies to release their software for Linux.

        Why? I mean really, why? "Ooooooo, it works on Linix. Ahhhhhhhh..." Sorry, but Real is a real piece of shit, and they will have to do a lot more than port it to Linux to win "real" respect.

      • Re:Bloated (Score:5, Insightful)

        by porp ( 24384 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:53PM (#8495382)
        Real hates MS so they chose to port to Linux. Their Linux ports were even worse than their windows counterparts. Hell, they're worse than any media player listed on sourceforge right now. Screw them being a major company to port a binary junk software to Linux. They were just being greedy not generous. And to say they could gain market share with their playback software is insane--someone has to encode it to that format to begin with. And I know when I see a file to streamed in Real Audio format, I know not to click there because it opens Real's software. Good riddance to them. They sucked in 1996, and they suck now.

        porp

    • Re:Bloated (Score:4, Informative)

      by Can it run Linux ( 664464 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:12PM (#8495105)
      You can download previous versions of RealPlayer at the Real Legacy Software Archive [real.com]. The previous versions should still play 95% of RealMedia content because they don't change around the codec, and the old versions don't have the bloat of the new ones. Plus they include versions of the player for Linux(TM), Solaris, IRIX, AIX and others at their community-supported UNIX download center [real.com].

    • Re:Bloated (Score:4, Informative)

      by Marlor ( 643698 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:51PM (#8495363)
      Real Player used to be a simple piece of audio (then later video) playing software. Now its becomeiwng one of those applications that wants to dominate your system and do everything from playing media to making eggs.

      Your best bet is to download Real Alternative [hccnet.nl]. It bundles the Realplayer Codecs (the newest 10.0 version) with the simple Media Player Classic UI, so you can watch and listen to Realplayer content without the annoying popups and spyware.

  • I used to hate RealNetworks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by $calar ( 590356 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:01PM (#8495015) Journal
    Their player hijacked your system. At least RealOne played a little nicer. It still has that dynamic app that constantly wants to access the Internet. I have to kill it with ZoneAlarm quite frequently. I agree with this article. Real's problems aren't caused by Microsoft, it's REAL . . .

    • Re:I used to hate RealNetworks (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:24PM (#8495182)
      Every time I install RealOne, it decides to start a processor that takes my processor to 100%. Funny thing is, I rename the file so it can't start it... and nothing breaks.

    • RealOne sucks (Score:3, Insightful)

      by autopr0n ( 534291 )
      I never installed it, but I've seen it on other people's machines and it launches a popup when you play media files. WTF!? Showing you advertising simply for viewing content already on your hard drive! It's obscene (IMO). I'd never install that crap.

      Is there any open source alternative for media serving? Why can't people just use that?

  • Open source (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:02PM (#8495023)
    With their helix community effort, they are trying to gain the benefits of being open while keeping the core parts secret. However, to become the standard, they should make the full featured helix server freely open source and fully free - with no restrictions/purchases/restrictive 'binary-only' non-commercial licenses. This will allow them to establish a non-Microsoft standard, allowing them to compete in the marketplace on a equal playing field, selling products such as helix video encoders and "pro" real players.

  • Car Talk (Score:5, Informative)

    by Twid ( 67847 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:02PM (#8495025) Homepage
    I like what the car talk guys had to say about Real:

    http://cartalk.com/Radio/windowsmedia-switch.html [cartalk.com]

    Car Talk will now be available via the Windows Media Player, rather than RealMedia. That's right, we're unceremoniously dumping RealMedia.

    Why? Because, for a long time, we've had tons of complaints about RealNetworks. And the one that ticks us off the most is the perceived trickery they use to sell their premium products. This is just our opinion, mind you, but it's shared by enough of our listeners, that we finally decided to take action.

    Here's the problem. In order to hear our audio, you have to go to Real.com and download their "free" RealPlayer. But when you get to the web site, the free player is harder to find than Osama Bin Laden at night. And the site seems to do everything it possibly can to get you to "buy" a player instead. You have to work very hard to get the free player. And we think that stinks. And get this. It stinks so much that it even makes Microsoft look good by comparison. That's something, huh?

    We've heard from many of our fans that have been duped, and who have accidentally shelled out their hard-earned dineros. And we won't even get into the ways that the RealPlayer tries to take over your computer once you install it. So, after surveying the alternatives, we're switching to Windows Media Player (which works on Macs, too).

    • Re:Car Talk (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kaden ( 535652 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:07PM (#8495061)
      Now if only my other favorite NPR show, This American Life [thislife.org], would follow Car Talk's lead...

      From TAL's site...

      We recognize there are issues with RealAudio - but there are other quirks with Windows RealMedia Player and other formats, too. And the "free" technologies some of you have kindly suggested have their own costs - mainly, they still require staff time (particularly time to convert our many, many shows) and server/bandwidth space, which are in very short supply here. We promise that we've investigated many options, and have chosen what we think is the best, and really, the only viable solution. Recognizing that we can't make everyone happy, we do the best we can, as we keep our promise to offer TAL shows free online.

  • Real's problem (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:02PM (#8495027)
    Is that Real Player is a big bloated piece of crap. No one uses it if they have a choice. Microsoft's destroyed a lot of competitors, but in this case, they didn't have to. Real did it themselves.

    I remember using Real Player back in like 1996. It was incredible stuff, and it just worked. But then they fell into the trap a lot of other software companies do. They tried to make their software do EVERYTHING, and instead of one doing a couple things well, it did everything poorly.

    • Re:Real's problem (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sinucus ( 85222 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:07PM (#8495058)
      I whole heartedly agree with you. Real has only themselves to blame for their crappy software. The fact of the matter is it's a peice of shit. WMP 6 was awesome. It did one thing, played movies. Plain and simple and it did it well. Real decided it needed to do 400 things and on top of it run 3 different .exe's to do it. Real player itself, the tray notification shit and the Real auto updater. I don't need that many freaking exe's running. Just give a button to click that says "Update me". Nor do I need ANOTHER taskbar program launcher that "speeds up" applications. I don't mind waiting 10 seconds for the HDD to rev up and find my program. Instead I wait 30 seconds for it to page all my taskbar launcher programs to disk so that it can load the damn program. Nice going Real.

    • Re:Real's problem (Score:3, Interesting)

      by caluml ( 551744 )
      Don't forget that Real only has the one method to make money - so it's not surprising if they tried to make it do a lot. Microsoft already has billions, and owns the desktop, so it's much easier for them to make their software simpler, without adverts, etc.

  • hidden add-ons (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Coneasfast ( 690509 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:04PM (#8495041)
    this is unrelated to the hidden paid add-ons, but when using the free player, you get a list of add-ons you want (add to favourites, desktop shortcut, etc etc), the first 4 are unchecked by default, but if you scroll down there are more, which ARE checked. very sneaky if you ask me. they could have easily increased the size of the viewable list from 4 items

    • Re:hidden add-ons (Score:3, Interesting)

      by arkanes ( 521690 )
      I discovered this by accident because I always do a custom install and look at all the options, and because I'm paranoid about RealPlayer. This almost made me spit - normally, you'd put the default checked items at the TOP. There's no reason whatsoever to do that except to trick people.

      In thier defense, I just installed the new version and it's much cleaner than RealOne.

      I rather wish I didn't need it, but I've got some old video in real format and no way to convert them.

  • Obsoletion coded into RealPlayer? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I once bought a legal version of RealPlayer back in 1999, and it worked great. But as soon as the new version came out, it seemed like my paid for copy started acting screwy, like Real had written code into it so it would work badly as soon as a new version (which would have to be bought again) was available for purchase. Even reinstalling fresh on a fresh install of Windows didn't work in getting back that "flawless" operation. Obviously I can't prove it, but I always got the feeling they purposely wrote d

  • Another "Blame Microsoft" Business Model (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Naked Chef ( 626614 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:08PM (#8495071)
    Similar to the RIAA blaming Napster for their poor sales, Real just assumes their business is going doen the toilet because of something MS did (they must have done SOMETHING evil, right?). I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that their product is just bloated spyware, or poor corporate leadership, or the "bunker mentality" at Real that the article mentions...

  • Real Spy (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:10PM (#8495082)
    I stopped using Real products after reading this [grc.com]

    • Re:Real Spy (Score:3, Informative)

      by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 )
      Yes... I hardly consider Steve Gibson a credible source of information. I remember his quotes back in the day when VCL (Virus Creation Labs) was released. He was "End of the World!!!" at anyone who'd listen.

      Take a look at a few links that question/discredit him.

      http://grcsucks.com/
      http://theregister.co.uk/c ontent/55/24189.html
      http://vmyths.com/resource.c fm?id=59&page=1 - According to him, AV is DEAD

  • WM and Real - Just Say No (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FunWithHeadlines ( 644929 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:11PM (#8495088) Homepage
    Ah, Real and Windows Media, the two formats I avoid on principle just because I find the practices of their parent companies to be ugly. It's a shame, really, and sometimes I go to a site where those are the only two choices I have to view video. So what do I do to get around that? Simple: I move on to the next site.

    Get that, Real? Some of us avoid your products because of your policies and would rather not see the cute little movie rather than give in. Enjoy your bottom line.

  • The best realplayer was... *drumroll* (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oldosadmin ( 759103 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:11PM (#8495089) Homepage
    Realplayer G2 w/RealJukebox.

    Great design. I loved it... then it started happening *cue sad music*... The upgrades... they said "RealONE" was the thing... but all it did was take away my ability to listen to crap online for free.

    Free Carolina Hurricanes webcast? Gone. $29.95 a month.

    Free Carolina Panthers webcast? Gone. Buy NFL Field Pass.

    Free racing webcasts? Gone.

    Now, I don't mind ads. Heck, I run a website, I live on ads [cheap plug]go to oldos.org [oldos.org] and clickyclicky on my google text ads [/cheap plug]. I wouldn't mind listening to ads during the game, watching cheap flash ads before listening, or anything like this. How come TV can survive without needed subscriptions (skin-e-max and h-blow excluded), but internet webcasts can't?

  • Well (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:13PM (#8495107)
    Here's my take on the situation:

    *BUFFERING*

  • Encoder (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcbridematt ( 544099 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:13PM (#8495110) Homepage Journal
    Wouldn't one reason for Real losing out is that Micro$oft's Media Encoder is free as in beer and Real's or Apples, for that matter, aren't? (well, they weren't last time I checked)

    • Re:Encoder (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Killswitch1968 ( 735908 )
      Bundling has a much smaller effect than people give it credit for, especially when the bundled product is garbage.

      I have yet to see someone use WMP over Winamp for instance. I see a lot of Nero, CDex and Trillian as well.

  • Striking out with Baseball (Score:5, Interesting)

    by icebike ( 68054 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:14PM (#8495113)
    Perhaps these practices are why REAL has reportedly lost the single biggest contract they ever had which was broadcasting Major League Baseball play by play for $10 per season per listener/viewer.
    While no huge amount of money for REAL, it was one of the single largest revenue sources, much of the rest of the revenue stream was from individual purchases of the player.

    Supposedly this year its gone to someone else.

    http://money.cnn.com/2004/02/10/technology/techi nv estor/hellweg/

  • How do you "accidently" buy RealOne? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by erick99 ( 743982 ) * <homerun@gmail.com> on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:16PM (#8495128)
    First: I don't like Real.com's product at all. I have had nightmarish experiences with it and would never, ever considering using it.

    But, how are people accidently buying the premium version? How do you accidentally type in your credit card information? I don't know about the rest of the world, but when I type in my credit card info I am *not* surprised when I get billed.

    Happy Trails!

    Erick

    • I think they think they never meant to buy the product, but missed the moving link to the free download. It's there, but you have to know it's there to notice it. The real player download page promenently display's the premium product and has a text link to the free download. It is not quite white text on a white background, but I would not put it past them.

    • Re:How do you "accidently" buy RealOne? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Galvatron ( 115029 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:47PM (#8495340)
      I think the idea is they knew they were buying the premium version, but they didn't realize they were getting extra addons (for extra cost).
    • Two issues. The first issue is that their favorite radio host tells them to download the free realplayer to listen to the show online. They go to the site and can't find a free player. They say: "I guess it costs money now. But I love that show: I'll just pay for it." Then the second thing is that Real tricks you into buying add-ons which you don't know about until you get the credit card bill. In extreme cases the add-on is a monthly recurring charge.

  • I use to love Real (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BadDream ( 577004 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:18PM (#8495145)
    I stopped using it when it became 'viral' and blatently slimy. Then I tried winamp, which I was already using for files I own. Not so good, in my experience, at finding streaming music I want to hear. Apart from Media Player, whats left? I feel like if I want to hear music through the computer, I have be willing to sell my soul.

  • Back in the day... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Amigori ( 177092 ) * <{eefranklin718} {at} {yahoo.com}> on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:20PM (#8495155) Homepage
    Back in the day, say G2 and earlier, Real was pretty decent. The radio stations were nice and I listened quite often, until they started making you register and/or pay to listen to the stations. The had a fair amount of features, no spyware/adware/etc., it wasn't microsoft, and worked with linux. It played the clips that I wanted it to play and didn't try to be everything. But then, either a later rev of G2 or whatever was next, sucked, and sucked hard. It tried to be my CD/MP3/Video/everything utility. Toss in some friendly spyware and adware, substatially decrease the general performance, and voila! One POS software that wasn't coming anywhere near my computer. I'm glad that I have a few archived versions of RealPlayer5 so that when I need Real for something, which is very very rarely, I don't have to use a shitty version.

    Just for a reference for what I use now:

    Win: MP3-Winamp, iTunes soon; CD-CDPlayer or WMP; iradio-WMP; Video-QT or WMP

    Mac: Audio-iTunes; Video-QT; ocassionally WMP
    Some might say that I gave in to the corporate machine; no, I'm simply using the best product for my needs and in WinXP, WMP works very well for most stuff; except for MP3s which I use Winamp 2.x or iTunes. And on Mac, you must give Apple credit for building some good software because iLife '04 rocks. As for linux, I don't use it as a desktop anymore because i can pretty much do it on OSX. Linux: Server yes, Desktop no.
    Amigori

  • Actual letter to Real Networks (Score:5, Funny)

    by kneecarrot ( 646291 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:20PM (#8495161)
    I've posted this before, but it's a goodie...

    TO: Real Networks
    SUBJECT: Fuck You All

    I am holding myself back in the most intense way at the moment.

    I don't care if this is the wrong address to send this to. Your website is a labyrinth of misdirection in which finding the simple thing you want is nigh-impossible. This, after about 20 clicks, was the first email address I came to. If you, as the person receiving this letter, have a shred of humanity left, you will submit this to the proper people. And now, on to my letter.

    Where do you people get off?

    My task: download Realplayer in order to view some streaming content. A simple project, one would say. Well, first you have to wade through the aforementioned sea of misdirection, all of it aimed at extracting your visa number to buy the completely useless realplayer plus. I realize you people need to make some money, but save it for the server business - it's bad enough that back in the day, you were inferior to several other streaming technologies, but somehow, like scum in water, you rose to the top. Leave the users who are stuck with your products out of your sick little power games.

    All I want is Realplayer Basic, to play realmedia, and ONLY realmedia. I am not interested in realjukebox, realdownloadagent, or realbuttplug. I specified this when I was installing it. I also am not interested in having your inferior product play my mp3s, or any format other than your own. This was also specified when I installed. How difficult a concept is this? Anyone can grasp it. And I won't even get into the god-knows-how-many useless "subscribe to our spam service!" checkboxes I have to uncheck, including five which are HIDDEN AT THE BOTTOM OF A STACK OF UNCHECKED ONES. With each click, the bile rises higher in my throat. If I knew a satanist, I would have him summon demons to terrorize your offices.

    So then, I go to launch an mp3 out of Agent, and not only does your software launch even though I SPECIFICALLY TOLD IT NOT TO DO THAT, but it's not even Realplayer - it's Realjukebox which I also SPECIFICALLY TOLD IT NOT TO INSTALL.

    And here's the real point: if you're going to go ahead and do a fascist coup of my system's preferences and resources (getting your filthy little icons out of my system tray gets more difficult with each new version), why bother pretending that you are giving me a choice? Just go ahead and take it, save me the trouble of unchecking all those boxes and saying No 20 times. Just go ahead, play your little game, and let me get on with removing your annoying system resource wastes from my pristine desktop.

    In closing, I would just like to say that I view your company as the most evil force operating on the internet today, and while I would end this with "may God have mercy on your souls" for anyone else (including Bill Gates), for you, I only pray that the people behind your software's design are raped by syphilitic camels at some point.

    Burn in hell.

  • Real sucks ass and here's why: (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:22PM (#8495170)
    -BIG ASS LINK to their paid player, and damned near invisible links to their older, free download players.

    buffering... buffering...

    -Huge application window hogged by distracting crap.

    buffering... buffering...

    -When people download a media player, it's probably because they want to view some media right fucking now, not after filling out a long-ass registration thing and setting a shitload of preferences.

    buffering... buffering...

    -That stupid Goddamned tray icon that will not die. Where's the "FUCK OFF" button when you need it? Anytime I see that shit in the systray on a client's machine, I go right into regedit and nuke it because the incessant blinking drives me into a rage.

    And last, but certainly not least:

    buffering... buffering...

  • Real's website, program and license feels dirty. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:26PM (#8495195) Journal

    Real could of owned the world, but heres my run down of why Real hurt themselves, they harrased the customer.

    1. Takes 10 minutes of hunting around the website for the free version. Even when you click on the "Free" version, it prompts you to buy it.
    2. When loading the program, it asks you to register, then prompts you to buy it, and then loads an html webpage.

    Back in the day, .ra format was the only format out, they owned the streaming market. Microsoft did what it always does, release the player in the OS, give away the tools, (which are very easy to use, and plain menus), and made good market decisions.

    Now Microsoft is using the mpeg4 format, and seems to be taking over HDTV format on Dvd's. They win, everything. They will be the OS and multimedia format of the future.

    While I agree Microsoft did use its power to assist in taking over, Real networks interaction with customers was on the level of spammers, horrible salesmen from hell. Customers had a bad experiences and walked away.

  • I can't seem to read the article. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Raven42rac ( 448205 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:30PM (#8495226)
    I can't seem to read the article...it just says "Buffering, buffering, buffering".

  • Underhanded business practices too... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by konfoo ( 677366 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:32PM (#8495244)
    I'm sure many readers will find this gem interesting:

    About 3 years ago I made mention in a closed streaming media group discussion of Real's flaws in their DRM 'solution'. This was widely published, and I was not the starter of the thread. However, I did drop the line (or something like it) of the solution being 'amateur hour'. Real's at-that-time marketing manager was on the list, and proceeded to track down my particulars and call up management at my company accusing me of 'hacking' their DRM product. I understand he was quite miffed. Ofcourse I posted this back to the list and didn't hear a peep.

    The long and short of this story - not only does Real make a shitty spamware/adware/annoyanceware product and try to get developers for free with their 'community source' claptrap, but they also go to interesting lengths to stir up bullshit to protect their interests.

    These days I am still at the same company, and architect my own product line. Whenever a customer asks about support for RealMedia, I laugh. Then I tell them this story. And thats the last we hear of the request. Oddly enough, I have never had anyone doubt me - gee I wonder why!

    A tip for Real - listen to your customers. And if you have bugs and/or shitty software, fix them.

  • No such a bad player. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eric_Cartman_South_P ( 594330 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:33PM (#8495248)
    I think th[BUFFERING...BUFFERING]at Real is a good music and vid[BUFFERING...BUFFERING]eo player. It's not perfect b[BUFFERING...BUFFERING]ut it works ok. Combine that with my new MSN high [BUFFERING...BUFFERING] speed internet and life is peRF3*&DHAH0+0+[NO CARRIER]

  • The only Real software I have use for... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WoodstockJeff ( 568111 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:35PM (#8495266) Homepage
    ... is the uninstall program. My Dell laptop came with it installed, but it was gone shortly after I saw the icon come up on the first boot. I can't stand nag-ware, and even the paid-for versions of RealPlayer nag you incessantly about upgrading to the version-of-the-week. What has this to do with Real Network's market share? Hopefully, a LOT!

  • Surprised, but not really (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bdaehlie ( 537484 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:43PM (#8495307) Homepage
    RealOne Player for Mac OS X is a sweet app. No prefs hijacking, looks good, works even better. I like it more than Apple's Quicktime Player. Perhaps there is just something about Mac OS X that commands respect from developers - Windows version of this same app sounds like a real POS.

  • Helix Player (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Joe Tie. ( 567096 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:53PM (#8495380)
    I hadn't tried real's helix player for months, and decided to give it a try a couple days back when I found a link mplayer didn't seem to like. If anyone's looking for an official player from real that actually seems well designed, they might want to give it a chance. The Linux client at least seemed really nice. Clean gtk2 based gui, uncluttered interface, and it dosn't seem to want to do much aside from playing audio and video. The only downside is that it's nearly as much of a pain to find on the helix site as the free version of realplayer is on real's site. Otherwise I think pointing to it might be a viable option for companies providing real streams.

  • registration... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @11:54PM (#8495386) Homepage
    I had to register my realplayer the other day. The following e-mail addresses were already taken.

    fucku@real.com
    realplayersucks@realplayer.com
    pissoff@real.com
    bob@bob.com
    bill@microsoft.com
    fucku2@real.com
    fucku2xwithdonkey@real.com
    fuckusidewayswithbroomstick@real.com

    At this point I was tired of making creative statements of protest against registration so I gave a fake hotmail account.

  • Wow (Score:5, Interesting)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @12:27AM (#8495555) Homepage Journal
    Check out the blog posts, especialy the third one. Apperanly real paid $2.5 million to a design company for design advice, and also hired an advertizing firm. The design company told them that they needed to make the software more use friendly, etc. The Advertizing company discovered that Real had universal name recgonition online (along with microsoft, google) but at the same universal distain.

    Both were canned, and none of their suggestions were taken.
  • and also to assert why I hate RealNetworks,

    The product sucks because it's heavily emcumbered.

    I recall when RealPlayer 1.0 came out. I found it, and started downloading it immediately.

    Then the next version came out, about... oh, about 12 minutes after my modem finished sucking down the first one. Err...

    So, pull that one down, because they changed the format and nothing works with the old one. That one's good for a week, and they have a "cool" version for sale as well.

    I'm deciding if I'm going to buy this "cool" version and show my support, only to discover that a "new" version is now out, and the current one is useless. I'm starting to see a pattern, here.

    I start to download that one, only to discover that 2 more version have been released before my modem can finish. I start to download those, and Real responds by publishing 12 more upgrades, all of which force the obsolence of their predecessor.

    About that time, cablemodems are invented, so I get one. I begin to download that week's RealAudio version... at a whopping 3mbs. But, it's no use. In the 25 seconds needed to pull it, those fucks have released 18 more incompatable versions, all of which make the prior ones useless.

    So, screw Real, they're little more than an upgrade scam. THAT is why they're a failure.

  • Man ... it's not that bad on OS X ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Durandal64 ( 658649 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @12:50AM (#8495672)
    RealOne on Mac OS X is actually a pretty decent, light-weight player. It plays Real Media streams and only Real Media streams, to my knowledge. That's all I need it for. And once I found the Free Download link, everything was pretty simple after that. Register with a bogus E-mail address, create some dumb-ass password and forget about it. And if I want to remove it, drag it to the trash.

    I find that a lot of software for OS X is like this, whereas the Windows versions almost always require some sort of surgical procedure to remove. Do the Windows programming departments of companies nowadays have more programmers just to put in the extra, spyware garbage? Because that kind of stuff certainly isn't in any prominent OS X applications that I can think of.

  • Older versions of RealPlayer (Score:3, Informative)

    by Catscradler ( 760084 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @01:08AM (#8495750)
    They do keep them available [real.com], however hidden they are.

  • I call "shenanigans"! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nxs212 ( 303580 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @01:11AM (#8495763)
    The reason they are in trouble is because of their poor vision of the future.
    We (company of 40,000) looked at their multicasting technology and news delivery in 1997. We liked what we saw and wanted to license or buy it for the entire company. They said "NO" - Real still wanted access to our desktops in the form of ads. I guess they thought there was a lot of money in that.
    Think logically, why would any CIO sign off on a product to keep his employees busy watching ads instead of doing real work?
    They did crawl back (at least a year later) and try to sell just the engine piece but no one was interested. There was better stuff available out there and cheaper by the time they realized their mistake.

  • Missed opportunity for open source (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @01:28AM (#8495860) Homepage
    So, considering how badly WMP and Real both suck, why haven't the open source players achieved more market share?

    Well, let's look at Freeamp. First of all, it's now called "Zinf" [zinf.org], continuing the tradition of stupid names for open source programs. Second, when we go to the Zinf home page, we have to click on "Download", one of a number of options (including "SF", which developers know as SourceForge but users do not.) On the "Download" page, the first option, in typical user-clueless style, downloads the Linux source distribution. You also have to download and build the "MusicBrainz 2.0 client library", whatever that is. "RPMs will be available soon for RedHat 9". No date is given.

    Further down, there's a Windows version, but it's three revs behind. But at least there's an installer and a binary.

    If you want to build the thing, there are obscure instructions. ("You'll need perl and NASM in order to compile the latest MP3 decoder assembly optimizations. If you don't have NASM, you can still compile successfully, but you'll only be able to use some of the older optimizations written in gas.")

    The Windows version is built with MSVC 5, circa 1997. Builds require some workarounds. ("NOTE: In order for the build to succeed you will need to install the SGI STL. ")

    Now consider a typical Windows user. Will they be able to figure out what they're supposed to do?

    Or worse, someone who bought a Linux machine at WalMart and wants to run Freeamp, er, Zinf. Will they succeed building this on Thiz Linux? What do you think?

  • Try Media Player Classic (Score:4, Informative)

    by mistermund ( 605799 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @01:32AM (#8495881)
    Like all of the above, I too got fed up with anything Real has put out lately, for obvious reasons. That and it spontaneously reboots everyone's machines here in the lab.

    Did some searching, found Media Player Classic [sourceforge.net] (Article) [neilturner.me.uk]- it's an open source clone of Windows Media Player before it got all colorful, space wasting, and less functional (WMP 8-9). Plus, with a bit more Google searching, I found Real codec packs [free-codecs.com] for it as well. On the rare occasion I need to play Real content, I can.

  • Real's merits (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Deadplant ( 212273 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @01:38AM (#8495904)
    Let me begin by saying that I don't run windows so I'm not all upset about the windows realOne player shenanigans.
    I run Linux. The realplayer on linux runs fine, it plays live real audio and video streams for me. (mplayer does everything else)

    Windows users may want to go try one of the new players. (there's one written in python you know... it is very simple, no bloat.)
    that's up to you though, it doesn't affect me much.

    Real network's server software is pretty good though. Better than windows media server.
    - It runs on linux.
    - It has an excellent system for live stream redundancy. Every step of the way from the camera to the player you can have multiple redundant systems so that no matter what; your live event does not die. I cannot over-state the importance of this when you are running a live event for a paying customer!
    - It is extremely modular. Especially now with the mostly open source helix software you can write/modify most capabilities.

    I am admin for several Real and windows media servers.
    Windows servers are an all around pain in the ass. Maybe that biases me towards Real.
    The windows media server is a black box, when it does something odd like suddenly stop logging or something all I can do is apply the standard MS remedy: restart the service.
    With the helix servers running on linux I can see what's going on. maybe I've just been spoiled by using OSS all the time.

    Oh, and have you ever encountered a bug is MS software, emailed a developer and had the problem resolved?
    helixcommunity.org actually has developers you can talk to.

  • helix is great (Score:5, Informative)

    by fiddlesticks ( 457600 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @02:43AM (#8496147) Homepage
    The recent Helix milestones are great

    Clean looking player, no bloat, great quality, plugin gets even the most troublesome pages (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod, for example) working just sweet

    There's a 0.2.1 Milestone (crack out the party hats - we got a 0.2.1 milestone!, but I digress..) out. There are Solaris, Symbian (!), GNU/ Linux RPMs and tars with installer, as well as the src, obviously

    you can get it here [helixcommunity.org]

    There are still shed loads of forms to click and agree to, you gotta signup, etc, etc. but they *say* this is part of their new, GPL-friendly and OSI-certified ways.

  • A tip for downloading RealPlayer One (Score:4, Informative)

    by Zog The Undeniable ( 632031 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @03:14AM (#8496245)
    Go to the BBC News [bbc.com] site first and get the link from there (it'll be under one of their video clips). Saves wading through all the sales puff for the paid-for player. Does anyone use the paid-for version anyway?

  • why hasn't anyone mentioned this? (Score:5, Informative)

    by bugg_superstar ( 73615 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @03:17AM (#8496253) Homepage
    real alternative [free-codecs.com] allows you to play all realmedia files without having to install realplayer.
  • I can't be the first to make this observation, but here goes anyway...

    Has anyone ever noticed that
    THEIR
    SOFTWARE
    SUCKS
    A
    BIG
    HAIRY
    NUT
    ?
    !
    ?

    Haven't allowed it on any machine of mine in about 3-4 years -- haven't missed it, either.

    Thank you for this opportunity to share.

  • PA newspost, and the true state of buffering (Score:3, Interesting)

    by waaka! ( 681130 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @12:15PM (#8499547)

    As of today, Penny Arcade had a newspost [penny-arcade.com] from Tycho that takes a paragraph at the bottom to disparage Real and plug RealAlternative like so many Slashdotters have already done here.

    On a pretty much unrelated topic, I thought it might also be interesting to point out that none of the major media players, as far as I can tell, suffer from the buffering which has been the butt of so many (!) jokes in this topic already. All of them have some feature (under different names, of course) that allows them to build up their playback buffers as fast as the Internet connection will allow, which basically gives you minutes of buffer after only a short period of time. Borders on progressive download, I guess. That and RealPlayer 10 has a feature that allows you to cache a user-specified amount of the past stream, even for live streams.

    Perhaps I'm too quick to consider forgiving Real for their privacy issues, but as far as playback quality goes (both in terms of streaming and codecs), bashing Real for being bad at that would be just plain misinformed.

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