Real Player or Alternative

[Guitarius]

Okay, I got some stuff I need Real Player for. Coming from using a PC, I'm weary about putting it in, cause if you'vce used a PC, you know that RP takes over your computer. Will it do this with my Mac, or should I find some sort of alternative to it? What's a good one?

[mkrishnan]

Okay, I got some stuff I need Real Player for. Coming from using a PC, I'm weary about putting it in, cause if you'vce used a PC, you know that RP takes over your computer. Will it do this with my Mac, or should I find some sort of alternative to it? What's a good one?

I have RealOne version 9 -- I'm not sure if it's the latest or not. But it is very unobtrusive. Actually more unobtrusive than Quicktime -- I don't think it does any of the annoying things I've seen in Windows Real. But when you install it, read everything carefully. There might've been some things you need to disable in there. I installed it a while ago, so I don't remember.

[iGary]

Real Player is evil, but if you have to, if you have to.

Can you get by with WMV? :confused: :eek:

[brap]

Real Player is evil, but if you have to, if you have to.Real Player for Mac is far nicer than any Windows version I've ever seen. edit: No, Actually -- I'l go so far as saying it's really quite good. Just be smart and run through the preferences when you start, although I don't remember having to uncheck anything particularly nasty.

It has some very nifty functions absent from other players, including fullscreen on second monitor - something which requires hacks in both VLC and MPlayer. Windows Media Player has no redeeming features beyond the ability to play proprietary WMV.

[mkrishnan]

Real Player for Mac is far nicer than any Windows version I've ever seen. edit: No, Actually -- I'l go so far as saying it's really quite good. Just be smart and run through the preferences when you start, although I don't remember having to uncheck anything particularly nasty.

It turns out that RealPlayer 10 is out of beta, and I forgot about it. It's still a drag and drop install, but I found that 10 is somewhat more intrusive and annoying than 9. Not in the ads sense, but it seems to require an insane number of firewall ports to be opened, in order to work correctly. Possibly for this reason, when I installed it and tried to run content out of firefox, it would ask me to close FF every time to "configure" it, and then open the real media link in a Real window, and then sit there at loading (0%) -- not hung, but not doing anything. And if I restarted FF, same thing.

So I trashed 10 and put 9 back on, and wouldn't you know it, the same link works without opening any firewall ports...hmm....

[Nermal]

Weird, I have a firewall and have had no trouble with any Mac version of RealPlayer. If a site gives me a choice between Real and Windows, I choose Real. And if I get a choice between QuickTime and Real, I choose QT if it's a progressive video, and Real if it's streaming. QT could not stream properly if its life depended on it :eek:

[mkrishnan]

Weird, I have a firewall and have had no trouble with any Mac version of RealPlayer. If a site gives me a choice between Real and Windows, I choose Real. And if I get a choice between QuickTime and Real, I choose QT if it's a progressive video, and Real if it's streaming. QT could not stream properly if its life depended on it :eek:

Hmmm...maybe it was not the firewall. I'm not sure. I've had great experiences with Real 9. Maybe it's even Firefox's fault. Who knows....

[grobbins]

but it seems to require an insane number of firewall ports to be opened, in order to work correctly. Possibly for this reason, when I installed it and tried to run content out of firefox, it would ask me to close FF every time to "configure" it

Both RealOne Player (version 9) and RealPlayer 10 behave the same for configuration. Because if Internet Explorer was running it would tend to undo the player's attempts to save media types like rm and ram to the Mac's InternetConfig database, RealPlayer wants all browsers to be not running, just once, when it attempts to save its configuration settings. If you let it configure once without the browsers running, it won't ask again.

RealOne Player was released before Firefox, so the older player isn't aware that Firefox is a browser that shouldn't be running when saving its configuration settings.

Firewall settings are unrelated to this, and RealPlayer doesn't care about them. Firewall settings can prevent streaming servers from communicating with the player, but RealPlayer never attempts to change firewall configuration.

[mkrishnan]

If you let it configure once without the browsers running, it won't ask again.

Hmm, but that's the problem. It didn't do any configuring after it quit FF. And Real 9 might not be aware that it needs to configure FF, but it *does* work. And I didn't just make up the bit about the firewall -- the ports Real wants are clearly listed in the help, and there're a lot of them. I'm not saying that's definitely the reason I'm having trouble. Just that I have no intention of opening all of those ports for RealPlayer.

Some of these are already open, granted, but....

By default, the RealPlayer uses the following ports to connect:

- TCP 80, 554, 4040, 7070, 8080, 443 (SSL for sign-in), 1755 (MMS Windows Media requests)
- UDP 6970-32,000, 1755 (MMS Windows Media resend requests)
- HTTP 80 (AU, Messaging Service, and HTTP Cloaking)

[grobbins]

Hmm, but that's the problem. It didn't do any configuring after it quit FF. And Real 9 might not be aware that it needs to configure FF, but it *does* work. And I didn't just make up the bit about the firewall -- the ports Real wants are clearly listed in the help, and there're a lot of them. I'm not saying that's definitely the reason I'm having trouble. Just that I have no intention of opening all of those ports for RealPlayer.

Some of these are already open, granted, but....

The only "configuring" RealPlayer does is set the Mac's InternetConfig database to tell browsers to hand off rm and similar files to the player. It quits the browser so the InternetConfig changes are not overwritten when the browser quits, and so the browser will load the RealPlayer browser plug-in. Setting up or working around a firewall is not part of its configuration process, in version 9 or 10.

Does RealPlayer 10 work for you if you manually configure the player's Transport preferences to use http exclusively?

[sebisworld]

I think RealPlayer for Mac is just as any other program. Since there is no Systray and no AddOn-Bars for Safari on the Mac, it really is not a problem to have it on your computer. Plus, it plays some Quicktime files a lot better than Quicktime does. And also, if you have a question about it, you can email the developer team (they do answer).
I think they should just get rid of the name and release the software under a "clean" one.

We need a good Windows Media Player for Mac, though. One that works as a plug-in and doesn't screw up all the streams.