RadLight 4 is a "fourth generation" multimedia player which enables you to playback DivX™, XviD and other multimedia content such as DVD or MP3 audio at highest possible quality even if you do not own latest $3000 PC. It has extremely low CPU usage and very small memory footprint.

A week ago we finally reached the alpha stage. Lot of work is still ahead of us (yeah, I know that the player currently lacks most of RadLight v3 functionality) but we are progressing pretty fast and everything goes as we planned it. Alpha 4 which is due sometime during next week should introduce a couple of major changes bringing us towards greater functionality. New graph handling code and fully rewritten GUI module with basic skin support are only few changes on our todo list. In our four year history, we finally got the feeling that we are on the right way to make this version of RadLight rule! (you know, after coding players for four years you start to learn stuff )

What's new in alpha 3? A lot. Network & Girder input modules are opensourced as well as the NetRemote application itself. This should give you basic idea on how to code your own RadLight 4 modules ... at least until SDK is finished Until then feel free to stop by http://www.RadLight.net/forum (developers subforum).

We would like to thank to everyone who participated in alpha 2 thread on our forum. Thanks for your suggestions and great feedback! It's much easier to work when you know there are people out there who love this player Our thanks goes to all people who bought RadLight Pro or use the ad supported version of RadLight as well. Without your support we couldn't afford to invest so much time & efforts into RadLight.

P.S Nobody managed to crash the alpha 2 and get advantage of the "Full version for a crash" offer so far. Quite impressive for an alpha release ;-)

Download : http://www.radlight.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=230

WARNING : What you can see is raw, unpolished, hardcore TEST VERSION only. However, I somehow like it It's still inferior to the current stable v3, though. You may want to download the stable version (see our homepage for this)

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RadLight official homepage : http://www.RadLight.net
RadLight community forums : http://www.RadLight.net/forum

I wonder if it will delete my Ad-Aware...

There is only one way how to find out

btw. Most parts of new RadLight 4 will go opensource (mostly modules and stuff)

Here is the link if you want : http://www.radlight.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=231

It was this day that I furiously deleted RadLight from my PC and went looking for alternatives.

well DAvenger is right. I wrote some WinLIRC Module for radlight and it did not tooked more than 30 Minutes until it was finished.
As you might not know, Radlight 4 is completely COM oriented (similiar to the Directshow architecture). It simply wraps the Graphbuilder and offers all routines via Interfaces.
The best is that it does not eat as much ressources as all other players. Hey since it hooks ALL exceptions, made by faulty codecs etc, you get the most stable allround mediaplayer ever.

Cheers
Tetris

i would say the Ad-Aware incident was enough not to trust Radlight, bah.

Not again,

i can not understand how stupid people like you are. Adaware is making profit with sharing fear under "dumb" users. RadLight was never ever bundled with spyware !! To allow giving it away for free it was logical to bundle it with ads. Try to suggest what happens if a software steals your income ? No software does have the right to remove parts of other software The way the RadLight Team was answering, was maybe not the best, but anyhow the only way to keep the audience listening to the problem.

1) taken from the board rules: No Hateful or Disrespectful posts. This includes: bashing, name-calling or insults directed at a board member.

2) i decide what should be on my PC, not you, not Radlight.

3) there's a totally FREE version of Ad-Aware (and it works like a charm, go figure).

4) if you want money, sell the product. it's a known fact that most people on the internet hate all forms of advertising (adware, helpware, third party garbage, etc.) and will do anything to get rid of it.

5) as far as i can tell (anyone correct me if i am wrong), this is not a place to promote comercial software, feel free to move on.

That's exactly what you did. You have no respect for others work and no idea what it takes to develop such software as RadLight is.



I agree.



There is a totally FREE version of RadLight as well ... go figure



There is a FREE, adware and commercial version. Any other suggestions? I would really love to hear some great ideas how to cover all our costs and still remain 100% free.



If we can have announcements about e.g Nero 6 and other software I do not see why not RadLight Oh, and (i repeat myself) it's 99% FREE

I am perfectly aware that I can't make you and lot of other people use our player but we still have lot of users who love our work and I believe that's worth fighting for

nice news.... i will test the new version ASAP.... actually it sounds very promising.... i discovered the low memory usage already in the earlier alpha versions.... it is aroud 6MB while playing

and for all others that have some "ad-a-ware"-complex:

i don't don't see the prob with ad-a-ware..... you have the choise Full or Ad-Supported.... and btw... a firewall blocks all this stuff.... so.... where is the problem... ?

have fun.... paresy...

Well i'm sorry if somebody feels harmed by the fact that i get angered about people who are acting arrogant against the work of others. It is easier to speak evil about the work of others, than to create an own.
Ad's and Commercials are a steady part of free tv, why is it so hated inside of software ?!?
I suppose you (as reader of this post) will understand this dilemma, straight after you payed a huge (traffic) bill for publishing your own created software.
And if you are forced to realize that another company is earning a lot of money (adaware authors are no.1 on the topseller list of element5), as some sort of modern robin hood - even if this One is rally the "stolen" money into its own pocket - i promise you will get very very mad.....

Eh, deleting the ad robot or blocking its access to the net will have the same effect for the authors: no revenue. So how is that different? Do you think this is a morally better method to cheat the author(s) of RadLight?

@Tetris: I hate all those god damn commercials. I have almost stopped watching TV because of them. Imagine 100s of people with crazy costumes running around you shouting in your ears and waving colored paper in front of your eyes. All at once. This is how I often feel watching TV or browsing the net. I just don't have that much attention to give away.

Most ad robots don't just download banners but intrude my privacy as well. I value my privacy and thus I use software to remove these annoyances. This is a conscious decision not driven by any form of FUD spread by the creators of adaware and co. I did not however make the decision to let RadLight remove other software on my PC (now don't say it was in the license agreement, it is still dubious if this way of presenting the license is legally bulletproof). I hate it when software manipulates my system in a way I don't want, so RadLight went into the trash and the RadLight team has lost my trust. I use a nice video player now that does everything I want. I'm not looking back. I don't think this makes me arrogant or disrespectfull either. I respected them for creating a nice player with native ac3 support (which is why I started using it back then), but then they pissed me off and I'm not letting it happen again.

AFAIK I'm currently not using any ad driven software since there is good freeware / open source software available for almost every task, so I'm not cheating anyone (and have been practically spyware free). If RadLight is so dependant on the ad revenue, then it should refuse to work without the ad robot installed, but not remove other software on my system I installed with a reason.

Really free, spyware/adware free alternatives: BSplayer, Zoom Player Standard, Media Player Classic, Core Media Player.

In my opinion all of these are better than Radlight and really free.

cya

I'll reply to this even if it was (mostly) for tetris Hope you don't mind



It's exactly the same as if you downloaded a crack



Do you think I am some freak and that I watch commercials 24/7 ? I also used to hate ads, but only recently discovered that they are indeed good for (at least) one thing ... they help to keep stuff free/cheaper. Now I look at them differently but you probably won't (or don't want ) understand this.



First of all, nobody ever proved this. I am not here to defend all ad companies but I can tell you that it's not necessary to do any sort of spying to properly target the ads based on the site content. Have a look at Google's AdSense ... do you think they "spy" on you to show you ad for some FTP client X when you read an article about FTP client Y?

Some of them (probably) do what are you saying. Or better to say ... go little too far than necessary. Blame me.



RadLight Pro (ad supported) works exactly this way. Free and the full version are free of any ads.

We had a bill to pay. Now we can afford to keep RadLight (lite version) totally free and that's what we always wanted

Regards,
Martin

Oh yeah, and which version of RadLight did you use to come to this conclusion? RadLight 2?

FYI: RadLight 4 is spyware/adware free ... but it's ok to write about things you have no idea at all

No. The latest stable versions.





http://www.radlight.net/helpware.htm

cya

Ah, so this (quote) means that RadLight is worse than the above mentioned players, right?

Btw. scroll up and read the topic header

No, it means that the latest stable versions of Radlight, available in Radlight's site download page, contain spyware/adware.

In my opinion, the other players I mentioned are way better. And it's not because of being spyware/adware free.

cya

I appreciate this reply. At least you are man enough to say "I don't like RadLight 3" and not rant about spyware/adware. And I agree, these players are better than RadLight 3 but hey I am not announcing RadLight 3 here

edit: sorry if you are a girl

Do TV commercials report information back to their producers that has little or nothing to do with marketing the product in question? Do TV commercials harm your TV and make it unstable while you are watching other channels? Do TV commercials continue to run in your TV's memory when you change the channel? Do TV commercials reprogram your preset channels to further their purposes!!!!!

This is why people hate software driven by ad software... ex- GAIN, Gator, CyDoor, Webhancer. It makes your Internet connection slower, can make your computer unstable, makes changes to your registry, and can also modify other existing programs such as AdAware. I could support products sponsored by GAIN because they do not attempt to hide their software, but I have had experiences where it royally f***s up system stability and leaches bandwidth from a system LAN. I treat such silent running Adware programs as Trojan horse viruses and delete them as such. And on a final note, deleting software from a users computer should be a crime. What if the person paid $20 to buy AdAware? Isn't that a form of vandalism or theft?

I liked the new term helpware And also these lines are priceless (quoted from http://www.radlight.net/helpware.htm ):



Don't you ever worry! It seems like those helpwares are so helpful. I wonder how to install all bunch of them at once

Umm, I think the topic has digressed into a fruitless discussion. I appreciate the work you did guys. But based on your philosophy I don't think I'd ever download or install this "fourth generation" software bundled with nth generation adware.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....t=0&#entry91469

I think this mentality has been covered elsewhere at HA. Check link above.

As far as the topic in general: Never gonna try something that deletes other software from my pc for its own gain. Period.

Besides, quite happy with the two that I use now.

>>>'Ad's and Commercials are a steady part of free tv, why is it so hated inside of software ?!?
I suppose you (as reader of this post) will understand this dilemma, straight after you payed a huge (traffic) bill for publishing your own created software. '<<<

and i agree with that. however, deleting any software, especially an ad-sponsored program deleting a windows maintenance program, without the user's consent, simply shows blatant disrespect for the user. that's why people are staying away from this product, and personally i don't blame them

furthermore, you need to understand that the majority of ad-sponsored software is in fact spyware. so one or two advertising firms changed their policy, so what? that still leaves the vast majority of ad firms other there, spying on people, where they go online, what do they fill in forms, etc. to learn about their surfing habits online and then sell this info to advertisers

there is no need to get upset on lavasoft and ad-aware. they make it perfectly clear that if you remove the spyware/adware component of a program with ad-aware, the program may stop functioning and that you should use an uninstaller (if provided) by the developer of the program to remove the spyware component

>>>'>>>'(adaware authors are no.1 on the topseller list of element5)'<<<

so what? they're not doing anything illegal, and they still provide a free personal edition. if users want to pay for more advanced features, it's up to the users. programs like ad-aware and spybot really do help protect users from sleazy developers who are only writing shitty programs for money. and what's worst, even after the user uninstalls this software from their computer, the spyware components remain hidden in the system, and the developer still makes money

Ouch, this discussion went into the same direction like on the other boards in the last months. I suppose it does not make any sense to continue this static warfare.
Good software costs its price and i do not understand if it is that bad to offer this software optionally for free but bundled with ads.
I in my case I learned from the dispute in the past and do no longer create free software. Neither for Linux, nor for Windows. Why should i pay huge bills of traffic costs and all i earn is a sardonic laugher?
Before you are asking which kind of programs i develop(ed) you might know that one of these products is selled in stores europewide. Hey one of my older open source projects even found its way on to the official Kylix companion CD from Borland :S:S

Cheers
Christian

Good software does costs its prices, as does bad software.

The problem is once someone tries a piece of software from a developer that either infests a system, or blantantly uninstalls a program which in reality is acting like a virus -- it's going to be nearly impossible to "save face" and regain any substantial trust from potential users, let alone their willingness to pay for an ad-free version. "Put harshly its like sleeping with a best friends wife and gloating about it in the media, and then wondering why good-ole buds can't watch the F1 race on T.V. again together." Trust is something earned, and once broken it will be rather difficult to regain.

As for having an ad-ware version of a program I really don't see a problem with it so long as it is clearly stated as containing ad-ware (spyware, bots, etc) and isn't hidden in some small-ass cryptic text or masqueraded deep within the typical boring-as-hell text of a license agreement -- it should be clearly noted up front that it is the ad-ware version that WILL install spyware on a system.

http://www.radlight.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=2

This is the part that makes me think this kind of software (SaveNow and New.Net) is spyware. Taken from Radlight 3.03 License Agreement (bold emphasis is mine):



I think this is contradicting what you wrote on the thread you previously indicated, specially this part, regarding Ad-Ware:



It may not send the results to a central server, but it tracks user surfing habits. Even if they don't use this information to make a "Personal Profile" it's still, in my opinion, spyware.

You also have a link to a report in that thread. However, that "independent" report was ordered by WhenU.com and it's not complete. There are parts missing. And I wrote "independent" because its author has worked previously with WhenU.com quite a bit (eighteen months prior to the report).

I made the following test when writing this post: I installed RadLight™ 3.03 Special Edition and uninstalled it again, using the Add/Remove Programs of Windows XP. Guess what? The Radlight entry did not disappeared, though the uninstall didn't gave any errors. And SaveNow and the Weather thingo were still installed (this last one at least had an entry in the Add/Remove Programs to uninstall) after this. I had to execute the SaveNow uninstall manually. Don't you think this is an abuse? I would expect SaveNow to be uninstalled with Radlight...

Then I made the same test with the Standard version. And I selected not to install the SaveNow and New.Net software. Then I ran Ad-aware and it didn't detected any kind of spyware. Very good.

More info:

http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/SaveNow.html
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...b;en-us;Q302463

BTW: will Radlight 4 have a free AND ad-ware free version?

cya

edit: typo

DAvenger,

is there any specific reason why the .mkv and .mka extensions of matroska are not supported in your player ? All other players mentioned above do it meanswhile, including the excellent Media Player Classic from Gabest, BSplayer, Zoomplayer and Coremedia Player. VLC even added a MKV parser to its library, as its not DShow based.

I wonder if you have any serious reasons not to do it, or if this is driven by political decisions against coreodec.com in general ? Will you block CoreVorbis and CoreAAC in your player, if people try using them for playback of their MP4/OGM files ?

Not at all. It should work this way (if you read the license file carefully you will learn that ALL SaveNow supported applications have to be uninstalled and only THEN it will remove itself)




Well, it's your opinion. I certainly do not share it



You are right to some extent. But who is independent enough to do this? Lavasoft? Certainly not a company which is being sued because of uninstalling so called "spyware"



There will be free, adware and shareware versions (all alphas are free)



And what would you expect? Get Imesh if you want buggy installer that doesn't care about what you opt out.

Take care,
Martin

Christian HJW,



Maybe because it's alpha version? And btw. there are no extensions in the opening dialog list at all Not even AVI and MP3. The alpha-graph rendering engine uses IGraphBuilder.RenderFile - perhaps you have wrong filter configuration. On our forums our users expressed appreciation for fine matroska support.



We all know that every DirectShow based player supports your fileformat when you have the splitter filter installed I suppose that you .... have it



With lame comments as this one you will only make me and other player developers do this and show all people what kind of person you really are

Oh, another flame (or holy) war. I'd like to contribute and make it hotter,
but I don't use any video player except mplayer (GPL).
And it works great! So, free software can be good and without any price tag.
Go figure...

/EDIT\ Modified line breaks \EDIT/

Heheh, I use Windows Media Player 6.4, Windows Media Player 9, Quicktime 6.3 (for the Matrix trailer) and Winamp 2.91 for video, of which the latter is freeware in all senses of the word.

Oh, and I went to Lavasoft and found out they released a new version of Ad-Aware, and downloaded it. Cool, scans faster, and found no spy/ad/helpware. Well, I've been scanning.

If SaveNow and New.Net is automatically installed with Radlight Player, then they should also be uninstalled automatically when Radlight Player is uninstalled.

No need for hidden lines in license files. Maybe that line you were typing about should be bolded, enlarged to font 60, displayed separately in the very first installation screen, and hangs the computer for 10 seconds to ensure that the installing user gets the point.


Confucius says: If you hate to read installation licenses, just install Winamp.

So..... maybe someone can explain to me why I should use Radlight over my current Media Player Classic?

Well, when you guys are so paranoid you should have read that already Anyway, I believe that level of disclosure of bundled components is at highest possible level ... many other software are way more sneaky when it comes to bundleware.



Yeah, but do not forget to disable the "anonymous" statistics



It solely your decision ... but I believe RadLight 4 is going to be way better than MPC

Sure, I understand this and I also didn't believe you watched commercials 24/7. But advertisement is getting more aggressive by the week, and there is only so much I can take, which is why instead of ads spawning positive emotions in me, I feel repelled and avoid them. At the cinema half an hour of commercials before the actual movie is common. That's half an hour less that I could perhaps be productive doing something else. Television shows are 1/4 commercials here in Germany. The commercial breaks last about 7-8 minutes each. I believe the situation is worse in the states and the interruptions are more frequent. It's all runnig out of proportion. Nowadays we have advertisement for advertisement transporting your very message. I understand very well what is being said and sadly I can't offer a better alternative, but to avoid it alltogether. (Yeah, I still go to the movies, but usually not during prime time so the commercials are a little shorter.)


Yeah, it's hard to look into the encrypted data that moves to and from my pc. There is good reason not to trust a piece of software that invades your system like cancer. I'm not blaming you for what the ad-robot does, but don't blame me for avoiding software that utilizes them. I don't have a problem with ad-supported software. I don't use any. Period. I have no hard feelings for people who offer decent software and want some revenue for their work and utilize the services of GAIN etc. I do loose trust in a piece of software and it's developers that disrespect me as a user and alter my system in an unwanted way.

I feel exactly the same way! In my opinion SaveNow is the lesser intruisive from all ad-software. The people there also care very much about people's privacy concerns .. believe me.



I am not doing that, am I? We offer choices for all kind of users ...

# FULLY FREE version
# ADWARE version if you can't/don't want/or any other reason pay for the FULL PRO version with advanced functionality
# COMMERCIAL version which is exactly the same as ADWARE version and includes email tech support and unlimited free updates

What else should we do for god sake?

P.S I know how does German TV look like ... and you are right, it's too much. But hey ... you have Premiere

I searched your forum for "matroska" (without the quote signs) and it returned 0 results. Maybe the search doesn't work that well...



In my test I uninstalled Radlight but SaveNow remained installed. And I read the license carefully.

I will not contribute to maintain this discussion alive anymore. It's pretty useless, imo... You, Radlight staff, have the right to include ad-ware/spyware in your products. It's the users that should be more aware about what "adware" makes to their PCs and about better alternatives.

cya

And I wasn't blaming you for the evilness of ad robots. I guess many will tell you that you should never have pulled that stunt deleting AdAware. The days after the "incident" I watched the forums closely but never found an apoligy (maybe also because of the many heated flames; it's hard to apologize to a raving crowd who badly insults you). I'm completely content with my current player now. What more could I want?

I think Premiere will die sooner or later and I think the program isn't very attractive. Pay-TV never really got established in Germany. Let's see how this will evolve once digital cable TV will become common.

Well, maybe it doesn't work

http://www.radlight.net/forum/index.php?sh...st=15&#entry968




SaveNow and Save are two different software ... SaveNow is used in the standard opt out version and will be discontinued shortly after RadLight 4 final is out (and will become freeware). SaveNow works quite differently, meaning it is not required to install and use it for RadLight to work. Save, on the other hand is required for RadLight Pro to run and it will uninstall itself when ALL Save supported applications are gone (this could be KaZaa, Bearshare, Cliprex, GDivX ...)



I have to protest against this subjective statement. Not all adware is bad and not all alternatives are better.

I use Media Player Classic for two reasons:

1. It can play Real media as well as Quicktime formats.
2. It has virtually the same interface as Windows Media Player 6.4

Since this is a forum that prides itself on evidence, can you tell me why I should use Radlight instead of Media Player Classic? Even the Radlight front page is less than convincing.



Those questions remain unanswered.

All what we did was that we stand still against this moneymaking "adware is evil, let's call it spyware" propaganda of Lavasoft and made few (unfortunately very few) people think about the facts.

I am happy for you that you found player that works for you All I can tell is that RadLight 4 will rock whether you like it or not



Hehe, maybe they should introduce more ads

Anyway, thanks for your replies ... you seem to be the only person here that actually thinks. That's all I want from the rest of you, guys

Well, then I have good (or maybe bad?) news for you ... RadLight 4 will allow you to do all this and much more

People who refuse to use Radlight do so because it erased Ad-aware. However, the defenders have not addressed this point directly, but instead go around it gracefully by defending the ad-ware/spyware concept, pointing out again and again that there is (or will be) a free ad-free version available. This is completely beside the point.
SaveNow, Gator, Cydoor, blah blah, might be very good and a very respectable way of earning money out of your work (as long as it is clearly stated), but is erasing another piece of software respectable (however despicable Lavasoft may be)? Or do you deny that the software was ever programmed to erase Ad-aware? If you don't, and thus accept your responsibility of tampering with other people's computers without their consent, then you deserve being mistrusted at best and have no right to call anyone stupid, close-minded, whatever for doing so.

~Dologan

That's what I've been wondering too. I don't really miss anything, but maybe I have a need I'm not aware of...

@DAvenger: I have never tried your player, and this thread doesn't make me want to either. As I see it, you represent the part that has everything to lose, and IMHO you don't handle this very well. It doesn't really matter how many lines you have "hidden" in the License Agreement, you and "everyone" knows that "nobody" reads it anyway. They are simply too long and maybe to difficult to read sometimes. The reason I don't think you handle this very well, is because of the fact that people can think for them selves. If they feel they have been cheated, they will, like dogs, never forget it. As a developer/company it doesn't really matter if this is rational thoughts or not, as long as something about your product makes them feel this way.
People here at HA may be more aware of things like this than the average user, but websites aimed at the average user talk about security too. They tell people about programs like Ad-Aware that can help them keep their privacy. Later when the users download Ad-aware and see that it reports Radlight (or applications that came with is) as an application intruding their privacy, they might feel uneasy about using it in the future. I don't think this sends out the right signals.

Back to where I started, I don't feel that I miss anything when it comes to multimedia players on my computer. BSplayer, Windows Media Player 6.4, Media Player Classic and more does everything I want. This makes it pretty easy to make the decision not to try Radlight, and even easier when you read things like this. Of course one should make up it's own opinion, but I don't care to when I don't feel I have the need for a new product.

Btw: I think commercials on TV are ok, because then I don't have to pay to be a viewer. The big difference as I see it, is that they can't intrude my privacy to the same extent as ad-ware can. Even if Radlight doesn't do it, others do, and that affects everyone that uses the same kind of technology in a bad way.

Not sure if my english is good enough to make myself clear, but I hope so.

No, I do not and never did. But you deny to think about the reasons why we had to come to this radical move ... and that's where the problem is hidden, my friend

@upNorth : I guess I handle it pretty good And I actually enjoy talking to people like you

I think you're missing the point here. upNorth summarized my feelings well when he said that we don't feel like we're missing anything from our current players.

I'm perfectly happy with what my player can do. What can yours do that is so much better?

We are still in alpha stage but you can be sure I'll keep you and whole HA.org updated on our progress. Anyway, I would say it's the stability and the extensibility ... something none of the above players mentioned has

I could write more but I won't. Look here at the same place next week and you will find new Alpha 4 with some really cool stuff

Whether there are reasons for what you did or not is not really the issue; and I am not denying anything. I am aware that Lavasoft demonizes ad-ware when perhaps it shouldn't and ad-ware is not necessarily evil by itself. I still choose to remain adware-free, and no one can blame me for that. Ok, ok, I *know* there will be a free version of Radlight and I *might* even try it if I am really bored, but let's return to the point.
No reason you might come up with authorizes you to delete something in someone's computer without their explicit consent. If that were morally right, then perhaps Bill Gates might want to implement a way to erase all competing software because he thinks that they endanger Windows stability and you should be better off without them. A very different thing would have been if you had included an option in the installer that expresses your point of view about Ad-aware and offered to delete it optionally. Since you didn't, then you deserve everyone's mistrust; since how will we know if suddenly you come up with another good reason to come to the radical move of logging our keystrokes, taking snapshots of our screens or deleting our documents?

~Dologan

We could have done lot of things differently, and we are paying for some things we did. But that doesn't necessarily mean these things were wrong "as-is", it just means that right now people are way too much biased against adware as a concept, and need to find someone to blame for their bad experience.

We have a right to defend ourselves. You have to agree on that.

And no, we won't log, spy or anything like that ... that's job of "freeware" software with "anonymous statistics"