Ben
Rotholtz, General Manager Web Services & Syndication
The performance of
RealPlayer has been dramatically improved. But what is performance and why
should you care?
Ultimately,
performance enables you to use your time more efficiently and get more out of
life. To begin with (there’s always a beginning) performance can be measured in
many different ways, such as installation, startup, workflow, video playback,
bandwidth negotiation and reliability. Performance can be thought of as
the synchronized combination of these functions.
The first
impression of RealPlayer performance is how quickly we can get you into the
driver’s seat through an installation process that is just four clicks easy –
and doesn't leave you with interfering or confusing defaults. No need to
restart your machine after installing (though you will need to close your
browser during installation to enable the “Download this Video” plug-in).
Then hit the ignition and RealPlayer starts up much faster than previous versions,
first time and every time. The benefit to you is that you don't have to wait to
play.
We've improved
workflow. Features and controls are in a logical place at the logical
time. You spot a piece of video on some web site, the content looks
interesting but it’s not convenient for you to watch it at that time. No
need to start-up the RealPlayer. Hovering above that video is the “Download
This Video” button. Hit the button. No need to watch the entire clip
while you download. You can navigate to a different site or even close
your browser and the clip will be downloaded (or recorded) in the background
faster than you could watch the clip itself.
Time-shifting video
from tens-of-thousands of web sites with one simple interface translates to an
enormous time-saving benefit. The new RealPlayer puts you in control of
web video so that’s it on your schedule and in your lifestyle – offline, burned
to a DVD and by the end-of-the-year available for transfer to portable devices.
This is one more faceplate of performance.
Behind the scenes
of web video time-shifting are workflow enhancements that you don't ever need
to know about but that are constantly working for you. You don’t have to care
about what format is being used (Flash, QuickTime, Windows Media or RealMedia),
what player is used and what method of delivery is being employed (on-demand
streaming, live streaming, progressive). Our goal with this release was to
rationalize video content across the web and make it as effortless as possible
for you to easily play back web video in your own environment when and where
you wanted.
Then there’s the
video playback itself within the RealPlayer. You can play videos back in
RealPlayer full screen theatre mode. There’s no need to wait for Mr. Buffer to
navigate around some interminable network router that is mindlessly tossing
packets overboard because it’s overwhelmed. We've tuned the video engine
to deliver smooth, full motion, playback. As the inventors of streaming
we applied these video performance improvements to video streams as well so
your on-line experience will be better.
We've also strived
to make this a much more reliable RealPlayer which will always save you
time. Put another way, we've fixed a lot of bugs. That said, we are in
beta as a consequence there are still bugs that will occasionally get in your
way and impede performance. We've staked our reputation on providing a great
experience with the new RealPlayer and we'd like to enlist your help to
identify any problems that you encounter. Let us know what you think.
Here’s to better
performance.
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