why do pople hate Real Player?

I am a complete unsophisticate here... I still haven't figured out how to use my MP3 player.

I ave always used real player... but htat was on my old lappy whihc 8s 6 years old. I am now loading up my new COmpaq Presario for my bedroom internet streaming I listen to at night.

One show I listen to only has an icon for playing its stream with RP. I started to download it and there were all kinds of questions.

So I came here...and whoa...RP is evil?

So I already downloaded it.... What should I do?

And what should I use in the alternative?

 

Real Alternative. Real Player is probably the most annoying software product. It is constantly attempting to access the internet to send your info out and trying to take over everything. It is worse than Windows Media Player although it is their only business and they don't have the whole operating system/office business to fall back on. I will say Nero and Power DVD are getting bad as well. I use Real Alternative and try to use free playera like it whenever I can as they seem to keep the annoyingness factor down.

 

I find Real Player excellent for watching DVDs - I always use it for that. I also use it for Radio One streams occasionally. However, it's not that great with music and I use iTunes for that.

 

maybe because:
1. it uses alot of ressources
2. its slow
3. its ugly
4. its interface sucks
5. it has dozens of pop-ups near the system tray, notifying you about any trash

when i needed to install it asked me in the installation dialog what i want to subscribe to. there were dozens of checkboxes in a list. All were unchecked,except the ones you couldn't see at your first view because you had to scroll down in this list.

 

Yes, RP is annoying to say the least. And even if you stop it from appearing in the Tray by removing it via msconfig, somehow it will re-appear on its own. And if you are not careful during the installation it will configure itself to be THE PREFERRED program for all media files. Just a pain in the A$$!

 

Relachs said it all. I use real alternative and only if I must. Otherwise I simply ignore real audio and video files. Never had any regrets so far.

Cheers,

 

exactly what ikovac said. also the same with quicktime. I hate when it starts up automatically and that Q sitting on the tray. Hate 'em both!

 

I use Windows Media Player and Winamp. I don't see the need to install loads of media players on your computer. I think it's just a waste of HDD space. Windows Media Plyer is perfect for watching anything and I like Winamp cause it's easy to use, has an amazing Internet Radio and the Memeory usage is quite low.

 

if you turn off the **** real runs at startup, its really not that bad of a program.

 

For those of you who want to keep it simple and use a free player with lots of plug-in possibilities and both video and music playback, good old winamp is a really good choice. For those of you who want to keep video viewing even simpler, try vlc media player. It plays everything.

 

Yeah, VLC is good for vids you do not have the right codec for, or dvd. But i find win media player more confortable for video.

Winamp ist a great program =) But they did remove the internet stream and AOL/winamp music section... good i have my four winamp inet streams in a playlist =)

 

I think the parade has passed RP by. Used to be a must but now just takes up space.

 

I am not a huge fan of the program, but the Real Video format is decent. I have a few 20-25 minute videos that are about 15MB each. The quality isn't bad, either. They probably aren't better than XviD, but, for the size, they are decent. A movie at that length compressed with XviD would be substantially larger, so the minor loss in quality is bearable.

I usually only watch videos on my TV through XBMC, but when I do watch the Real Videos on my computer, I put up with the Real Player. I have tried VLC but I am not a big fan. I'll just stick with Real Player.

 

Wow, I didn't know all of this about RP...

I only used it because it was the only one of my players at the time to play my Bootleg version of Advent Children >.>

 

Back in the day of your 6 yr old laptop, realplayer was a decent player, I used it also.
in the last few years however, they became a not-so-decent company.
Today's RP is a bloated, system resource hog that tries to take over EVERY aspect of anything even remotely media related on your PC, while giving you "helpful" popups on new stuff.
You have to dig deep into the configuration (and know almost exactly what to look for) to prevent it from locking up every possible media file into using it for the default player. And unless it's changed in the last couple years, it used to "phone home" what you were doing/watching with regularity.

Openface is right, though, the format is one of the best for streaming video. If only it wasn't tied to such **** software and a not-so-ethical company.

 

I remember when I updated RealPlayer just cause... Every single media file on my PC changed to RP default, which annoyed me quite a bit...

 

Maybe this is a strong allegation on my part but I started receiving SPAM when I registered my email account through RealPlayer.

 

I had an old MSN account where I literally got 300+ spam messages a day...

Nothing to do with RP though.. I think...

 

Doesn't surprise me at all!

 

I second VLC Media Player: http://www.videolan.org/

Also, there's the Combined Community Codec Pack: http://cccp-project.net/
It comes bundled with zoomplayer and Media Player Classic. I haven't found something it can't play yet.

 

The way I use RealPlayer: I install it, disable all of its extensions and startups, delete the files in the folder Program Files/Common Files (there's the real culprit) and forget it. Then I download a plug-in for winamp so that I can play ra, rm, ram, etc files with it and that's it.

 

I install it, but have all that jazz disabled.

Even still I don't like the interface, everything is click this, click that, I like to have keyboard shortcuts. I bet Realplayer has 'em but I like them the way winamp, core media player and Asus DVD is set up.

Using the space bar to play/pause, left/right arrow keys to jump forward/back a few seconds, up/down arrow keys to raise/lower volume, and a few others the way I like it.

The Core Media Player also has a function where you can PAN in and out so if the image is just a tad shorter than the width or height of your screen you can just kinda zoom in to fill the little bits of space that are open by using page up/down.