New RealPlayer is Now Available

By Matt Spragins, Director of Product, RealPlayer

The new RealPlayer beta is now available for download.

Please visit http://www.realplayer.com to download the new RealPlayer.

After using it, please come back and give us your feedback.

Comments

Sweet. W00t I got first

[Miguel]

(Full) Linux version now!!!

[Codinome]

What a nightmare. I downloaded the new software. And now my RealPlayer won't connect to the internet. PLUS... I can't find a place on the RealPlayer website to download the former version that really worked. This is horrible.

Please, think twice about downloading this version until it is de-bugged.

[Antonio]

Terrible experience, I didn't know which version was the new RealPlayer and you guys are always trying to sell the SuperPass and the RealPlayer Plus, is very difficult to find the Free Player, and when you get the link you don't know if it is the Player beta with the Download feature.
Then the worst part, I thought I've downloaded the bet Player and then I saw that I've downloaded the old version, I can't find the new one.
What a terrible experience. I found the link to the beta Player on the UK realGuide.

[webmeba]

Great player, great features, as always.

Other than that I completely agree with the other comments, trying to actually find the actual download link was a pain. And I ended up downloading it at the UK realGuide...

Other than that I thinks its a great player.

[Bobby]

In IE 7, I can't load a flv at http://video.onflex.org

[Sentinel1]

Hmm... the beta doesn't appear to play mp4's. The other formats appear to work fine, though.

[Michael]

2 bugs that really need to be fixed!

Realplayer 11 Beta disables Aero skin in Windows Vista!

When viewing Real content on web pages like http://www.nfl.com/ I lose the Aero skin on Windows Vista. This happens with both Realplayer 10 and the Beta Realplayer 11.

I hope this will be fixed.

AND

Turning Volume down in Realplayer 11 Beta but still hear sound! Windows Vista

On Windows Vista not sure about XP if I turn down the Volume all the way in Realplayer 11 beta I still can hear the sound. If I click on the Windows mixer I can turn off the Realplayer volume there.

The problem is when you move the volume all the way to the left in "realplayer 10 or 11" and then check the realplayer volume in the "windows mixer" you can see that the volume is not all the way off. Thats why I still hear sound.


So the problem is simple turning down the Volume in Realplayer does not turn off sound 100% in Windows Vista.

Can this be fixed? I know this must be a bug becasue No other media player has this issue including Rhapsody 4.0.

[Zero3K]

The "Grab Flash, etc. Video" functionality doesn't work in Safari for Windows (latest beta).

[Matt C]

So the problem is simple turning down the Volume in Realplayer does not turn off sound 100% in Windows Vista.

hmm Works Perfect for me and im on vista.

i dunno about aero cuz i dont have drivers for that.

[Bill Dettering]

If you're having trouble capturing video from real Player 11, or if you want to edit or convert for portable devices, check out Replay A/V, WM Recorder or Replay Media Catcher. While these are not free, these programs do an excellent job of capturing streaming video and audio.

[Antonio Carlos]

I work for a big media company at Latin America, and I don't want the users to easily download my streaming content, so how can I disable this functionality so the Reaplayr doesn't offer this option for my videos.

I saw that you guys do this on several videos at the RealGuide, disabling the recording button.

Where can I find documentation about it?

thanks

[Matt Spragins, Dir of Product, RealPlayer]

wow, there are a lot of comments flying in. I will try to answer questions as often as possible.

Vista - We currently have a few Vista related bugs, the most visible being the disabled Aero skin. We are working on them and you should see better Vista support in the next beta release.

Due the variety of ways to implement video on the web, it is impossible for our download feature to work on every site. However, that does not mean that we can't try to fix it. So please send us the site URL that does not work at http://deploy.ztelligence.com/start/survey/survey_taking.jsp?PIN=13953GPUUD2S9

This beta version only supports Windows XP and Vista and IE6, IE7, and Firefox 2.0. Support for Mac, Linux and Safari will be available before the end of the year.

Thanks for the feedback.

Matt Spragins

[Matt Spragins, Dir of Product, RealPlayer]

Bill Dettering,

We are both out to increase the consumption of video and while we have different approaches and philosophies to the downloading of web video, lets keep posts to this blog about the new RealPlayer and the video industry. We encourage competition because it moves the industry forward and allows users to see how much better and easier the new RealPlayer is compared to your products, but please do not use our blog to pitch your products.

Matt Spragins

[Matt Spragins, Dir of Product, RealPlayer]

Antonio,

The only way to protect your content from being downloaded is implement a DRM solution. The new RealPlayer respects DRM and will not download protected content.

Matt Spragins

[Ilgaz]

Breaking news to content providers: Users are ALREADY downloading your videos to stream them. The true protection would be using DRM on whatever format you are using.

Check download sites for "flash video" or "flv" you will see hundreds of titles, freeware/open source/shareware or Adware on any operating system you can imagine. "Adware" is the thing should bother you, they are doing all kinds of things to your viewers computers over your content. Realplayer is at least (thanks to new management), a credible software title bound to privacy policy.

I wonder about some other format videos which the producer asks $30 to "save as source". I am afraid of starting a war here, media people already know what I speak about. The famous "pay $30 to display full screen" software.

Having "copyrighted content", "don't allow save" flags in file spec/ running World's most popular trailer site and ignoring those flags is a thing to discuss but not here, not on this blog.

[Webmeba]

Wow, I like this bug! Personally I hate Aero Glass, Windows Classic owns all.

[Rob]

Recording from YouTube is easy. Recording from most other sites is a coin toss. I could not record streaming video from c-span.org nor the regular recorded video from uwtv.com.

Ran into problems with the pause/resume where it stopped working when I ran out of disk space. It would be nice to know how much disk space is left while downloading. Also, not all video tells you how much disk space it takes up while downloading. Actually, I would like to know before I press the download button.

The player itself needs its own record button. The VCR buttons don't work correctly when trying to record from within the player.

I don't see a way to convert video format, only audio and this is a plus feature.

[Rob]

I changed all media to run in realplayer. But when recording a Windows Media video it only recorded & played sound. There was no video. It did play fine in the latest version of WMP.

[Rob]

Recording from inside realplayer is a big pain. We lose the consistency of the Download & Recording Manager. It's difficult to know if its recording despite the red or blinking light. All recording should be consistent and displayed in the manager. That way one could watch the same type of progress in downloading from outside the player. We lose the ability to record and then move on while recording if we are in the player.

The better design is a big red button up top that says record. Depressing the record button pops-up the Recording Manager. Keep the player as a player and don't confuse us - even the experienced.

[Kate]

Any plans to let mac users in on the downloading fun?

[Nigel Shipley]

I tried to advance part way through a streaming audio file. This worked very well in the previous version. First time I tried in this version it just sat there in 'loading' state forever. Second and subsequent times it found the start point and played nothing but silence!

How do I switch off the RealGuide? I want my RealPlayer back to a small size. Most of the time I don't need/want Now Playing, My Library etc. even showing as options

[Matt Spragins, Dir of Product, RealPlayer]

Rob,

Thanks for the feedback on the sites. We will look at them and include bug fixes in the next update.

As for your comment on the file size, it is sometimes difficult to predict the size of a streaming file, so we did not include that as part of the UI.

We are working to make the in-player download/record feature similar to the web download feature but need to work around some technical difficulties first.

We plan to offer video conversion in our beta 2 update.

Matt Spragins

[Ed]

I downloaded a couple vids from YouTube and Google and they downloaded flawlessly. The download tabs worked without a hitch, but playback is a different story. All the vids played back very choppy and out of sync.
I meet/exceed minimum requirements, running Windows XP sp2, 512mb ram, 1.6 GHz P4 etc...
Any ideas on a fix on my end to improve the playback? The player looks nice and the download feature is very cool but playback is disappointing.

[Kevin]

LOVE IT.....I've already recorded a few items off UTube I've wanted forever. This thing is so cool, I think I'll sign up for the pay player just to say thank you!