OK, Im about to vent my anger:

REAL NETWORKS and REAL ONE PLAYER SUCKS BADLY

Their software is buggy, contains bucket loads of adverts, takes a computer with shed loads of ram to run and just generally isnt user friendly.

I just loaded it before and it says it has to "Update" then Reboot to update, then it tells me it cant update, then gets stuck in an endless loop.

This is just stupid, I have been using TARA, a Real player replacement that snaps into a quality piece of software called "WinAmp" :)

But this has recently been causing me problems aswell, because it needs certain components from winamp to work, since real are p155ing about with their software it looks like there are minor problems.

My Question is, does anyone here know of a Real One Player replacement for WIndows 2000 so I no longer have to use their horrible software?

I agree with you on this one. I really dislike the new version and whenever I close it a message center pops up. This is a lame attempt by Real to throw in more junk. Uggh!

I mean, come on. Real is giving us a free product and then trying to make a little money through advertising. Who the hell do these people think they are.

Valid point Colin. :)

Dogma,
trying to make money of a free product that offers such nice features is OK.
However, their software is way too intrusive. One example: whenever another one is installed, in some occrences, it will change .wav (or whatnot) extensions to work with it.
What' really annoying is realplayer displaying a popup that reads something like "Hey, this other software is now associated with this extension.I should be the one who is. I will fix it when you click on [Ok]".

My gripe? "[Ok]" is the only button available :rolleyes:

I simply right click it on the task bar and then click "close".....

Awhile back RealNetworks was taken to court over their RealJukebox product. Which, incidentally, installs with RealPlayer (at least up until the last version prior to RealOne). The problem? RealJukebox was spyware. It intentionally sent back information on what "other" software was installed on your computer to RealNetworks. In my opinion, what I have on my computer is none of their business. Free software or not, if I choose not to register because I don't want to be spammed by them, they shouldn't then take it upon themselves to gather information from me anyway.

I currently don't have any of their products installed on my machine.

BUY REAL PLAYER GOLD if you dislike the advertising...

Originally posted by IT Hosting
BUY REAL PLAYER GOLD if you dislike the advertising...

I did, but I still dislike the spyware aspect of all the Realplayer software (even the Gold stuff).

I've gone back to an older version of RealPlayer for the video stuff, and I am looking at mp3pro (http://www.ejaymusic.com/ejay_mp3pro.html) for the audio stuff.

Buy the full version shouldn't need to be a requirement. How's this for a solution: Windows Media Player.

Free, no ads, better compression, and there are only a handful of sites (stupid ones at that) that don't allow for both anyways.

Since all compression programs EXCEPT for Real's allow you to encode in both WMV and Real format most providers do it that way.

Here's a better solution: Quicktime.

I wish people would start moving towards that and away from Real. It's true, that the Real Player is a piece of crap.

I handle the real player situation by configuring my firewall to block all external requests. This way, no ads will annoy me, and I closed all non-essential bars/message center.

Not sure if I am using the latest version though, since I blocked it, it doesn't warn me of a later version. :)

Strangely, I have not seen real player trying to control other extension at all. Maybe its just my version?

I also prefer Windows media player. The only thing I dislike is that version 8 has a frame skipping problem that always cause my videos and audio to occasionaly skip a second or so of content. (I know its a WMP problem because the same file plays fine on real player.)

Peter

WiMP 6 (NOT 7 or 8) for Video, Winamp for audio. w00t w00t!

prefer media player myself. Also prefer MSNMessenger. I'm not particularly pro Microsoft, but both products just do what they're supposed to do without the rubbish packed into them like Real Player, and ICQ. Everyone accuses MS of bloatware, when there's plenty of other culprits out there.

Greg Moore

Originally posted by Dogma
Here's a better solution: Quicktime.

I wish people would start moving towards that and away from Real. It's true, that the Real Player is a piece of crap.
Oh, please. Don't go there.
Talk about evil; I'm an avid Mac user; I even used to code games on Mac more than 10 years ago.

I am so pissed at Apple right now (cf. their new .Mac crap, OSX upgrade not an upgrade after all...), so fed up with their greed, I would not use quicktime just for that very reason.

Originally posted by cyansmoker
I am so pissed at Apple right now (cf. their new .Mac crap, OSX upgrade not an upgrade after all...), so fed up with their greed, I would not use quicktime just for that very reason.
Oh come on. Of course Apple should give you tons of free stuff that costs them money. Operating a server farm, it probably costs them just pennies! How dare they ask for $100 for that! That's excellent hosting for $8.34 a month.

It does kind of suck though, they should let people keep their email address for free. But developing all this software (iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, etc.) costs money and they're giving it away for free!

They can't do that forever...

Actually, I couldn't care less: they can keep their .Mac stuff, I'm not using it anyway.
The real issue I have with them is having to pay for a brand new OS when they release OSX.2; why? because as "beta-testers" of their OS we've always been willing to cope with the bugs and the extreme slowness, and _even_ throw in some dollars for an "update" that would make the OS look more like what it was supposed to be in the first place. But now they want us to pay for a brand new OS when this one is merely a WORKING version of what we already have. Even Microsoft sells upgrade kits!

Originally posted by Jeremy W.
Buy the full version shouldn't need to be a requirement. How's this for a solution: Windows Media Player.

Free, no ads, better compression, and there are only a handful of sites (stupid ones at that) that don't allow for both anyways.....


You forgot the spying aspect of Windows Media Player, it calls home with your playlists.

Additionally, the recent EULA for the Windows Media Player has very, very onerous terms.

No thanks.