BBC & Realplayer
 

Doe's anyone know if the BBC get paid for having all there media content on Realplayer. Now I never use it myself because it's naff but while I pay for a TV Licence dont think the BBC should be getting money for making people install that either ?

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

Typically a company will pay to have their media content in Realplayer as it is how Real generate their revenue. It is a common model for media playback companies to adopt, the playback client is free for the end user while the encoding tools and server streaming support is paid for by the content provider.

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

I thought it was the otherway around. They have a pay service after all even though the BBC is not on the pay part it doe's give Realplayer a good advert. Why else would they use such a rubbish player.

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

Amazing, I thought I was the only one who hated the way every BBC clip is an .rm file. I used to have real player on my old PC, but find the quality to be crap compared with other formats, so don't have it on my PC now. Kind of limits my enjoyment of their site and makes me wonder why they don't give a choice of format like most other sites!

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

Yep I think it should be either using the Mediaplayer 9 codex's (10 is in beta :D ) or Quicktime

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

Nothing wrong with good old MPEG...

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

Not 100% sure, but I could imagine that it is partly a legacy thing, the BBC have been using RealPlayer for a long time, back when it was even vaguely usable with slower connections. Another factor could be that there are versions of RealPlayer available for almost every OS, I guess it could be awkard for the BBC to use a delivery system that is limited in what computers it can be used on, kind of like having television that only worked if you had a Sony TV.

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

I exchanged emails with someone at the BBC some while ago when they began a limited trial of using Windoze Media format for some streaming, to ask them why, if they were thinking of changing the way they offer streaming media on their website, they were not experimenting with generic formats rather than proprietory (which WMV is). They indicated that the WMV trial was to test demand, but that they were closely watching the development of the latest MPEG standards. This was maybe 18 months ago, so I don't know where they have got to with it. However the fact that WMV has not become widely available at BBC online does suggest to me that the vast majority of people are happy to use whichever player is necessary on the website they visit.

As for why they go for Real, it could well be that Real Player is the original, and at the time the BBC needed to invest in the necessary server and encoding software it was the only sensible choice. Even today, agencies I work with in my job, when given the straight choice between Real, Quicktime and Windoze Media, tend to favour Real because (they say) Real is more easily configurable from a content provider's point of view, and it is easier to get a good deal from Real for the necessary licencing. Remember, just because a client media player is free to the home user, does not mean it is free to create and manage multimedia web content. It isn't.

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

I agree with that but I'd also put money on it that Microsoft would do the BBC a very nice deal to get there player on there. Perhaps even give it free. Never known Microsoft to pass up a coup anyway

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

Hell, if they wanted to use a free streaming server then they could easily use QuickTime Streaming Server (runs on OS X) or Darwin Streaming Server (runs on OS X, Red Hat Linux 9, Solaris 9, Windows 2000 Server or Windows 2003 Server) and stream everything in MPEG4. It even does 3GPP streaming for mobile phones, which would be a nice addition to their existing services.

There are more than enough options for client software that way (I know that at the very least QuickTime Player and RealOne Player/Realplayer can handle MPEG4 and I'm sure there must be options for WMP to handle it as well).

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

Recently someone I know was trying to put some mpeg-4 encoded videos on a website (for download rather than streaming), they ran into trouble because WMP refused to download a codec for it automatically, it wanted to use it's own incompatible version.

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

That's a shame. You'd think by now it'd be able to do proper MPEG4, wouldn't you?

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

OKay people.

Step 1 Uninstall Real 1 Player - A) Because it sucks and b) Because its way too pushy for my liking

Step 2 go here and download Real Alternative and the codec pack. (Follow the instructions)

Step 3 sit back relax and be glad you got rid of real player.

BTW - if you go further down the page - you can download Real Alternative by itself. Just in case you miss that.

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

I hate real on the BBC simply because I can't get it to work on my ipaq, I know I'm not alone.

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

Nice work. Nothing is going to make the picture better but at least the operating system within it has been taken out and it doesn't try and take over the computer:

EDIT: Can only get it working by downloading the .ram files and playing via the media classic player. Picture is poor but it is realplayer still

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

But that does not mean the hardware will be free, nor the developer time to put multi standard on all the pages, or the staff time to encode in multi format (or developer time to automate this process).

No matter how cheap a software licence is, the other costs of implementation are generally large in a situation such as this.

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

At the end of the day anything is better than realplayer the quility is cr#p

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

No-one has mentioned this yet.......

RealPlayer is also a nasty little spy.

Take a look at how much traffic goes FROM your realplayer to the realplayer network whilst you are watching a clip.

....maybee this threadshould have been called "I hare REalPlayer because...." :D

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

The last time I had a chance to view the same piece of video, encoded at the same bitrate, playing simultaneously on WMP and RealOne, side by side on my PC screen at work, I found the Real video to be noticeably better, with sharper contrast and brighter colours. The WMP video was muddy by comparison.

I'm curious what you base your opinion on - have you experimented with it in this way?

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

Some of the worst picture quility I've seen and I've used quicktime, Mediaplayer divx/xvid you name it

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

I'll second that, I've watched movies I've encoded at the same bit rates in RM, Divx and Xvid, the RM quality was noticably better.

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

Have you put the same video, same bitrate, in the different formats, side by side on your screen and played them simultaneously?

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

I hate Realplayer because it never works properly and is such a pushy piece of software.I never feel in control of it.So I won't use it.

Incog.:)

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

Hmm only testing I done in the past when I had that rubbish on my computer was trying a DVD out with it. The picture was not as Mediaplayer

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

I hate the way it is getting increasingly difficult to find just the free player on the Real site. I hate the way you have to spend ages going through all its settings before you're sure it will only do what you want, when you want. But I also recognise that Real Player is like this as a result of pressure from the marketeers and the bean counters at Real who are trying to make money out of it. I don't let it cloud my judgement of the core product, which is a streaming media player whose codecs produce good-quality video.

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

That's interesting, as it may point to RealPlayer basically being crrap as a DVD player, or at least not as good at it as WMP. But I do maintain that when you test the players with their proprietary formats side by side, Real's is noticeably better than M$.

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

I hate the program but find the picture qaulity on some sites as my 3D card has a feature that cleans up and applies a filter to streaming video making it look really nice. Also on a 1MB connection so that helps too.

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

This is one of the times that I'm glad that the Mac version of a program doesn't have the full feature set of the Windows version. The OS X version of RealOne Player is just a basic player for RealMedia and pretty much nothing else. No DVD playback, message centre or any of that other crap. Just drag & drop the program to install, and on the first run it installs the browser plugin to /Library/Internet Plugins :)

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

You're absolutely right about it being the marketers influence that's causing the problem. The developers do a version for Linux/Unix systems called the Community Edition, but because it's not a product that they sell, the marketers haven't had any influence over it, and I have to say it's actually quite a good player. It doesn't contain any of the regular rubbish that the other versions of realplayer do.

Re: BBC & Realplayer
 

I think I've found the answer to my own question here anyway. I just checked out www.bbcworld.com. They have Realplayer on there too of course but its subscription only. So there no doubt using Realplayer still on www.bbc.co.uk because of the subscription only bussiness on that website