news.zdnet.com— RealNetworks will release open-source software this year that will let Linux computers play Windows Media files.
Aug 16, 2006View in Crawl 4
would be better if they supported ALL Real streams in the first place. It can't play the streams on science tv (not sure about the site's name).Mplayer works fine for everything else to be honnest.
I use Ubuntu on PPC. That means I can't play h.264, flash, and many other codecs. But the crappyness of proprietary components in Linux doesn't stop there. I also have no nvidea drivers, no google earth, no NDIS wrapper, THAT is why these "Linux zealots" don't like depending on proprietary components in Linux. It hinders distribution, slows progress and innovation ( see nvidea and ATI drivers not supporting AIGLX ). Binary blobs should rot and die. </rant>
One of the big problems with the Mplayer+w32codecs solution is that those codecs are insufficient. They work well for anything encoded with a relatively old WMV codec, but with quite a few more recently encoded files I've come across, you get severe streaking and discoloration (akin to the sort of "scrambling" you used to get on cable/satellite channels you hadn't paid for a long time ago) which makes the pictures really hard to watch (oddly you do get a lot of the picture, you just get it badly distorted and discolored, so I'm presuming there's a fairly minor codec change between the older format and the newer one).A legitimate codec developed for linux to the correct specifications for the WMV format would completely eliminate this issue.
dukeinlondonAug 16, 2006
would be better if they supported ALL Real streams in the first place. It can't play the streams on science tv (not sure about the site's name).Mplayer works fine for everything else to be honnest.
kwhatAug 16, 2006
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trogdoorAug 16, 2006
I use Ubuntu on PPC. That means I can't play h.264, flash, and many other codecs. But the crappyness of proprietary components in Linux doesn't stop there. I also have no nvidea drivers, no google earth, no NDIS wrapper, THAT is why these "Linux zealots" don't like depending on proprietary components in Linux. It hinders distribution, slows progress and innovation ( see nvidea and ATI drivers not supporting AIGLX ). Binary blobs should rot and die. </rant>
diggapleazeAug 16, 2006
it won't even play all the videos off of real's movie trailer site either!
diggapleazeAug 16, 2006
using closed source windows binaries hacked into mplayer's mozilla plugin is incredibly more unstable
kettlechipsAug 16, 2006
If mplayer had a half-decent mozilla plugin I would agree.
foibeyAug 25, 2006
One of the big problems with the Mplayer+w32codecs solution is that those codecs are insufficient. They work well for anything encoded with a relatively old WMV codec, but with quite a few more recently encoded files I've come across, you get severe streaking and discoloration (akin to the sort of "scrambling" you used to get on cable/satellite channels you hadn't paid for a long time ago) which makes the pictures really hard to watch (oddly you do get a lot of the picture, you just get it badly distorted and discolored, so I'm presuming there's a fairly minor codec change between the older format and the newer one).A legitimate codec developed for linux to the correct specifications for the WMV format would completely eliminate this issue.
squirlyblackAug 1, 2008
Personally, i don't like real player, i would rather go with vlc or mplayer. But the thought of gettingeverything in a package is not that bad. I had to follow tutorials to get the movie part working, same for mp3 when i started using linux. So, if linux is heading for a more user friendly interface, this package from RealMedia is actually good. <a class="user" href="https://cisco.hosted.jivesoftware.com/index.jspa?ciscoHome=true?utm_source=blog+commenting&utm_medium=media&utm_content=Google&utm_campaign=International">https://cisco.hosted.jivesoftware.com/index.jspa?c ...</a>