back to article Move over Microsoft: RealNetworks has a GOOGLE problem

“When you start a company that has good success, then you step away from it and it doesn’t continue on the trajectory you would like it to be on, your pride kicks in,” says RealNetworks chairman and interim chief executive Rob Glaser. Glaser was explaining why he returned to the company in mid-2012 after a two-and-a-half year …

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  1. Smallbrainfield

    Wow, RealPlayer.

    I have to say I'm amazed they are still a going concern considering how horrible RealPlayer was.

    1. Stretch

      Re: Wow, RealPlayer.

      Indeed.

      1. AMBxx Silver badge
        FAIL

        Re: Wow, RealPlayer.

        Have a feeling this thread is going to turn into a 1000 reasons to hate realplayer.

        More the merrier, say I. So glad it's no longer needed as part of a standard install.

        1. Thecowking

          Re: Wow, RealPlayer.

          Realplayer, oh dear me.

          I remember rmvb being the only format that vlc wouldn't play out of the box. I don't know if it's still true because like the dodo, the format is dead.

    2. Nick Ryan Silver badge

      Re: Wow, RealPlayer.

      Too true. RealPlayer has been irrelevant for a long time now.

      To to add insult to injury, RealPlayer itself when embedded in IE causes all manner of problems that are strangely all solved by uninstalling RealPlayer. :) Other than the lack of crashing, does the end user notice the lack of RealPlayer? No.

      When diagnosing this problem it was probably the first time that I had launched the RealPlayer application for a very long time - probably about 10 years. It doesn't seem to have improved much.

      It must be hard for a business that was the size of Real to find themselves irrelevant with no real direction to head into.

    3. Lamont Cranston

      Re: Wow, RealPlayer.

      Quite. I assumed that consumer stopped using RealPlayer because it was awful, and likewise content providers stopped using RealNetworks' proprietary formats because consumers didn't want to use RealPlayer (because it was awful).

    4. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Wow, RealPlayer.

      Quicktime, Realplayer, WM9+ all are thankfully not missed.

      I do miss Sonique though, which was odd as it wasn't actually the best music player (Eye Candy maybe)

    5. BillG
      FAIL

      Re: Wow, RealPlayer.

      I have to say I'm amazed they are still a going concern considering how horrible RealPlayer was.

      There used to be a Crapware rating website, and RealPlayer was awarded the #1 Crapware title. I remember RP as being horribly bloated, using up CPU, memory, and network bandwidth. When setting up new off-the-shelf computers I went out of my way to uninstall RP, then manually removing all traces of it from files and registry.

      There were also serious issues with RP violating user's privacy. This is worth a read, for no other reason than to laugh at how oblivious RealNetwork's executives are:

      https://www.grc.com/downloaders.htm

      What RealNetworks has probably counting on is a new generation of young users that don't know just how horrible RP was/is.

    6. Dave 150

      Re: Wow, RealPlayer.

      RealPlayer, horrible? that's a far higher rating than I would ever give it

  2. David 164

    Real Player, that the thing that takes forever to open a video, if it does open the video at all?

  3. Roger Greenwood

    One word:-

    Content.

    It's amazing what people will do and put up with for stuff they have to have. Just look at sky.

  4. Pet Peeve

    Riight, there's no more ill-will towards realplayer. Embedded adware, crappy performance, formats with no exit, demanding you explain why you were uninstalling before it would uninstall - all water under the bridge.

    Seriously, screw these guys. The world doesn't need them, as has been well proven already.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      To be fair: back at the end of the 1990s RealPlayer was the only way to do video on the web and it was pretty good at that - it took better hardware for Flash video to be able to take off. But if Real hadn't taken Microsoft to court and Adobe not had the money to improve Flash then we'd probably all be using WMP / Silverlight. Shudder.

      1. Teiwaz

        I kinda agree. Back in the 90's Realplayer was 'almost' a defacto standard.

        It was also 'painfully' slow to load, buggy when embedded, chock full of fattening adware and crappy browser toolbars (if you had quicktime, realplayer and a few other apps that had toolbars bundled, there was hardly any room on the screen for the webpages).

        It was also a realplayer pain the arse to uninstall. Between it and quicktime, no sooner had you got it off your system in favour of a decent codec pack and wmp classic than a dialog popped up from a webpage or an installation asking if your wanted to install it (if it wasn't automatically bundled with some shit).

        Switching to linux in '99 and having to compile xine from source and tweak was a positive relief...

    2. tony72

      You have to wonder who participated in that brand study they mentioned. Pretty much everyone I know considered RealPlayer to be a micro-step away from being malware. It was banned from any machines I was responsible for back when it was still common, and from what came across in the article, it looks like RealPlayer Cloud is going right on the banlist too.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I really don’t want to see an ad for nappies in front of the video for my dad’s memorial service. It is a very moving personal document and I don’t want to be perturbed with advertising.

    "So instead, we'll force people to download and install propriatary always-on bloatware, over-write all existing file associations, then show the ads when the user is working on something else... and just incase you don't like it, we'll make it difficult to uninstall."

  6. TheOtherHobbes

    I'm so glad that era is over.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    What????

    We don’t insert ads in front of it. I really don’t want to see an ad for nappies in front of the video for my dad’s memorial service......

    Am I mistaken? Is this the same nasty company that knocked the living shit out of any pc with it installed, with adware crap that was a fucking nightmare to remove?

    "My PC is running slow"

    "Do you have real networks / real player software installed"

    "Yes!"

    "Type this...Format C:" (yes I know)

  8. Eradicate all BB entrants

    I thought they ....

    ..... had been taken around the back of the barn and put to rest for eternity. I remember the hell RealPlayer caused and as a few people have pointed out, the only way to rid yourself of it was to nuke the drive from orbit.

    Especially on dial up where it would take 15 mins to even think about starting a video because all the popups were busy hosing your massive 6Kb of bandwidth.

  9. Snoremonster

    "I really don’t want to see an ad for nappies in front of the video for my dad’s memorial service."

    1. Don't put your dad's memorial video onto youtube, jesus.

    2. Youtube's targeted advertising would probably show an ad for log burners, or shovels.

  10. Outcast !!!

    Buffering...

    Buffering...

  11. Crisp

    RealPlayer! Wow!

    Let me fire up a 56K modem, connect to Compuserve, and download a movie that will crap out at 76%.

    That takes me back!

  12. Lunatik

    Don't want adverts? Don't enable them!

    "I really don’t want to see an ad for nappies in front of the video for my dad’s memorial service."

    Typically greedy RealNetworks bigwig can't see past the fact that YouTube allows to enable or disable monetisation on a per-video basis.

  13. Calum Morrison

    There was an alternative...

    I probably still have a download of RealAlternative - a wee app that played Real media files (including BBC streams) but without installing all their shite. It was freeware IIRC and I installed it on many PCs. If Ninite had been around then,I'm sure they'd have stocked it.

    Happy days

  14. StareClips.com

    Has this guy not heard of Google Drive? He keeps comparing their service to YouTube, talking about the ads. Well, if you're just wanting to store your personal videos and want to be able to watch/stream them from anything and don't want ads in them, you can do this by uploading your videos to Google Drive. It makes it streamable and doesn't add ads. You can also technically upload the videos to Google+ and not share them with any circles and they'll still be private, viewable by you, and with no ads.

    This guy is pushing something that really isn't necessary, other than a "me too" service, which is fine, but he keeps pretending that RealNetworks is the only game in town.

    1. asdf

      except

      From what I understand accessing Google Drive from a Roku requires a separate computer or tablet/phone to use PlayOn channel or whatever (Couchy TV supposed to be flaky). Also Google Drive doesn't change the format on the fly for you so it just works on any device you want. Google Drive though does provide a lot more storage for free.

      1. asdf

        Re: except

        More information is needed on Couchy Play. Such as, what video formats does the it support? I tried some AVI files and the videos don't show up when using Roku.

        reply

        Video Formats Supported

        According to the folks at Couchy, "We support those formats that can be decoded by the Roku processors. That should include MP4 (MPEG-4 Pt 14), MOV and M4V. HLS should follow suit soon. For MOV, the codec inside has to be H.264."

  15. asdf

    to be that guy

    Don't get me wrong I hated realplayer the trojan horse bloatware with a passion as well back in the day (don't think they installed the ask.com toolbar but just about everything else). The thing is realplayer cloud is actually a decent solution for me. It allows me to play my downloaded movies both on my Roku and Chromecast. By putting them in the cloud I don't have to keep a computer running all the time and worry about bringing it out of sleep any time the missus wants to watch something. I was also able to jump through their little hoops to get enough storage for the half dozen critical movies I put on there without having to pay a monthly fee. The upload took hours though on my DSL.

    1. asdf

      Re: to be that guy

      Yes there are other cloud solutions but few work well on both Roku and Chromecast and most require you have bought the movies already through some store. The not having to worry about formats is a nice benefit of Real too I guess. The company still sucks and that guy looks like a porn dealer so I am sure I will eventually regret this solution though.

  16. IGnatius T Foobar
    Megaphone

    All together now!

    I think I speak for everyone, everywhere, when I say:

    Wow ... Real is still around ??

  17. bex

    Unless you use mad eye moody level of constant vigilance (and unchecky) crapware like this toolbar gets easily installed, oh an yes realplayer is still a thing and I actually know someone who paid for the pro version recently

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    iPhone helped kill it also

    As web sites started to care about mobile accessibility, Flash video and Real video had to be tossed because neither could be viewed on an iPhone.

    Even people who despise Apple and everything they stand for should salute them for having a hand in killing Flash and its retarded little brother, Real video.

  19. Hans 1

    RealPlayer

    Now, you guyz know I bash Windows/Microsoft ... now, I am thankful Microsoft saved us from this bunch of back orifices (even using their monopoly strategy I so despise) - seriously, RealPlayer sucks, always has. I guess I can still bash MS, though, because with their $700m, they kept these swines in business.

    They bundle google toolbar by default ? So a trojan horse it is ... I am sick an tired of having to remove all these fsck'ing toolbars off of the mate's systems because they are too n00b to untick that fsck'ing box. So I usually uninstall the shit that brought the "trojan" as well ... only exception to this rule: Java ...

    RealPlayer is dead, so is Microsoft^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HWindows^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMicrosoft Media Player, btw, long live VideoLanClient.

  20. Robert Grant

    The only thing I remember about RealPlayer?

    Is this.

  21. Al Jones

    Back in the day

    Way, way back, in the early 90's, when RealAudio first showed up, it was an excellent solution to the problem of big .au (uLaw) or .WAV files - it actually became possible to stream audio in real time over a slow dialup link, and for the first couple of years the player wasn't the bloated PITA that it eventually became.

    RealAudio would never have become an object of hate if it hadn't been good enough to be adopted as the defacto standard in the first place. If they had managed to curb their greed, and hadn't adopted the sort of tactics that so many users absolutely hated, they might have made something of themselves, though Glaser would probably argue that they wouldn't have survived this long.

  22. shovelDriver

    "It is a very moving personal document and I don’t want to be perturbed with advertising. There are a set of things are different about personal video than public video."

    Hmm . . . then why store your videos - your data - in the Cloud in the first place? Especially when it is so easy to have your own cloud with a fairly cheap NAS device? Sure, you have to pay extra to get home-ISP upload speeds above a crawl, but it's still not that expensive. And you have the added benefit of knowing your data belongs to you.

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