Those of us who have been on the ‘net for a while can remember the heyday of Real Player. One of the first ways to squeeze passable audio and video down narrow dialup connections Real Player was a boon to the then emerging streaming media market. Somewhere along the way Real Media lost this focus and tried to enter the media library/management/player category with the RealOne product. Ever since then it seems the amount of advertising and junk that comes with the player has discouraged many from installing it. There have been some alternatives available (RealAlternative comes to mind) but these enjoy limited success as they don’t support the latest features and are rejected by some sites. For several years I ran an old copy of Real Player G2 which was about the last unbloated version of the software but that no longer works at many sites. It has even become hard to find the free version of the standard Real Player and it still comes with bloatware and advertising.
One alternaitve that I’ve been using for a while and seems to work well is the “Real Player Enterprise” edition of the software. Designed for companies who revolted against installing Real Player becasue of all these problems, this client is ad-free and you can turn off all of the annoying features. It also is based on the current version of Real Player so it should be accepted anywhere with Real Media files. Good luck trying to find a link to this from the homepage though!
You can learn more about this program on the Real Player Enterprise website and download a free copy from the download page. Stream on.
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