Years ago, RealPlayer was the defacto player for all streaming media – this was before MP3’s hit it big, and it was most definitely Real Network’s realm. At the time, bandwidth was limited, so compressing the crap outta that stream was the way everyone went. Sure, the video was a little blocky, yes, the audio was tinny, but – it loaded fast on a low-speed connection. Then broadband Internet came. Not only was the Internet fast – now it was accessible. Making your streaming media compressed as much as possible wasn’t quite the focus any more.
Read about RealPlayer's history
Flash has overwhelmed Real Audio/Video as a viable format, and even that is in jeopardy as HTML5 looms on the horizon.
Remember when you would install the player and you would have to deselect (I kid you not) around 15-20 options so you didn’t get all of the notifications or spam emails from them? It was for this (Message Center) reason that I stopped using RealPlayer entirely. It happily sat in the system tray, spewing forth notifications that I cared nothing about, offering nothing that my current media players could offer, other than supporting a dying standard as everyone was using .asf and then Flash-based streaming media.
Some years later (I’m talking around 7 or so), I noticed that RealPlayer was actually still around, and noticed that it is actually useful. Now, I’m not saying it’s useful for all you tech-heads out there, but for the folks at the office or educators who need snippets of Youtube videos, etc. for presentations or other things…it’s a viable tool.
Also, if you are a fan of gathering said videos and playing them from your iPad/iPhone, Blackberry or other device, RealPlayer actually has a converter that is extremely easy to use that will convert flash (or other) based videos to a variety of output formats suited for these devices.
My favorite feature is definitely the download video option that appears above supported video types. Once downloaded, the video will appear in your ‘My Library’ tab, granting you additional actions you can perform against the video. It’s dead easy to do.
Features that makes RealPlayer compelling:
- Easy one-click download of Flash-based videos, i.e. Youtube, CNN, more… (no DRM stuff like Netflix or Hulu, though!)
- Easy conversion process of recognized video types (including downloaded videos) to portable devices/smartphones or PC/Mac
- Quick snipping tool for videos. Only want a short portion of that Youtube video you downloaded? Crop it!
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