There aren’t many technology companies that I try to stay away from completely, but there a few, and RealNetworks is one of them. I have never liked their software, and frankly, I’ve never quite understood their reason for existing. I mean besides Rob Glaser getting to do his own thing, what has RealNetworks accomplished? They created media formats that no one wanted to use, so they switched to reverse-engineering their competitor’s formats. Oh and they took Microsoft for $460 million for beating them with “monopolistic power”. Nevermind that Microsoft’s software/technology was and still is superior.
Anyway, after a relatively long period with no news, RealNetworks has announced a new version of RealPlayer:
How is the new RealPlayer different from previous versions? Let’s touch on a few highlights: The most notable difference is visible across tens of thousands of web sites immediately after installation. On-demand and live streaming and progressive video in the four major formats – Flash, Windows Media, QuickTime and Real – is now downloadable through a very simple download button that temporarily hovers near video content as it plays.
Ignoring the fact that there are already dozens of ways to download YouTube videos, why would I want to? The quality is usually pretty horrendous. I suppose downloading live streaming content is cool, but not when you consider that most live feeds are posted in downloadable form later anyway.
Seems to me like this is a last-ditch effort to make Real relevant. If you’re really interested for some reason, Scoble has a video interview and demo with Vice President Jeff Chasen.
I think Jason Cox said it best in a comment on Scoble’s post:
Real? How about no. Friends dont let friends use Real.
Agreed.
Read: RealPlayer Blog
MasterMaq's Blog 
Hmmm, last time I installed real (and not since on my last two dev machines) was to watch Big Brother, um 2?
P.S. I kind of resent installing QuickTime too.
I don’t mind QuickTime…but I wish I didn’t have to install iTunes!
Yeah, RealPlayer sucks!!!!
RealPlayer blows chunks. I hate RealPlayer with a passion.
I tried the new version out of curiosity and the downloader doesn’t even work! What a joke.
Both Realplayer & “Craples” Quicktime are both absolute Garbage BloatWare Trash Media Applications.
Realplayer is damn near the size of an operating system after installation and Quicktime is not much better in that realm either.
Just install MS-Mediaplayer-11 and a few extra codecs like XviD, DivX & AC3filter and your set for just about any video WORTH Watching.
Off Topic!
Also have a large beef with Sun Microsystems Java for Windows, it’s a big boat load of bloatware also over 90meg installed. MS-Java is less than 10meg after installation. If one was developing Java app’s than you would want the bloated Sun version but it’s not necessary for main stream web browsing.