PlaybackTime

Category: RealSystem

  • "Mastering Compression" class

    My friend and streaming expert Ben Waggoner will be holding his next two 5-day Mastering Compression classes on June 30 and August 11. These classes are held on the Stanford University campus. They’re part of Stanford’s Digital Media Academy program, so you get Stanford Continuing Education credits for taking the class — that means that…

  • RealNetworks drops authoring support for Mac OS X

    Most people don’t realize that a significant consequence of the Helix DNA platform is that RealNetworks has curtailed authoring support for non-Windows platforms. Most significantly, RealNetworks will no longer be providing authoring solutions for Mac OS X, the world’s second-most-popular OS. Instead, RealNetworks intends to release a RealSystem 9 SDK for Mac OS X through…

  • Final release of RealOne Player for Mac OS X now available

    The “gold” (looks more like plastic, actually) release of RealOne Player for Mac OS X is now available. First, “order” the free player by avoiding all of the obvious buttons and clicking the small link in the upper-right corner of the page. Once you’ve done that, you’ll need to either (1) register, (2) give them…

  • Helix Producer source code released

    RealNetworks has released the source code to Helix Producer, its encoding tool. Note that although Helix Producer has been open-sourced, it is not free, and some of the most critical pieces of the RealSystem platform (such as codecs) have not been open-sourced. Because RealNetworks had abandoned all platforms except Windows with their most recent Helix…

  • Palm licenses RealOne Player Mobile for Palm OS

    <yawn> | Link

  • Movielink to support RealSystem and Windows Media, not MPEG-4

    Movielink has announced that it will use both RealSystem and Windows Media for it’s upcoming video-on-demand services. “We wanted as low a hurdle as possible for consumers to be able to get movies through the most widely distributed players, Microsoft and RealNetworks, and the most secure digital rights management technologies,” Ramos said. Note that they’re…

  • RealNetworks releases open-source client

    Last night, RealNetworks announced to Helix Community members that its Helix DNA Client source code is available to registered users. The jury is still out on whether RealNetworks’ open source are going to make a difference. The Helix mailing lists have been dead quiet, suggesting massive disinterest. The RealNetworks licenses don’t help — for example,…

  • RealNetworks' server business eroding rapidly

    Today RealNetworks announced their financials. Compared to the same quarter a year ago, (1) revenue is flat, (2) software license fees fell over 40%, (3) their net loss has nearly doubled. On the bright side, consumer revenue increased 76%. Can RealNetworks survive until they’re forced to abandon their per-server, per-stream revenue model in order to…

  • Washington Post Calls RealOne Player "Universal Headache"

    RealOne Player claims to be a “universal player”, but this Washington Post article is a good summary of why the ability to use QuickTime and Windows Media to play content in those respective file formats may not be an earth-shattering advance for users. Link

  • "RealVideo 9 Clearly Better Than Windows Media 9", says RealNetworks

    RealNetworks recently announced new, independent* third party test results in which consumers preferred RealVideo 9 over Windows Media 9 by a ratio of 4:1. Note that in the press release, RealNetworks marketing people meant to say Windows Media Video 9, and not some other video codec supported by Windows Media 9. (*Yes, RealNetworks paid the…