Real has updated the Mac OS X version of their movie player, RealPlayer, to version 10. Among the new features are an updated user interface and support for playing any movie format supported by QuickTime.

RealPlayer

Here goes a small review:

This player seems decent; the user interface is quite nice - I like the overlay controls which are pretty similar to DVD Player or Windows Media Player (for Windows). When switching to full screen, they made some horribly slow scaling effect; hopefully they'll fix or remove it in a future version.

For people who just want a no-nonsense movie player, I believe RealPlayer 10 will be better than QuickTime Player; you don't have to pay for full screen, and the full screen UI is pleasant and intuitive.

It won't replace VLC for me, though. It doesn't support subtitles and MPEG-2 (without Apple's MPEG-2 component).

This is pretty old news.. I've had it for quite a while.

Yes, I installed RealPlayer 10 on June 19th. You're a couple of months behind.

Perhaps they released an updated version?

There appears to be only a security update for RP 10 Beta:
http://service.real.com/help/faq/security/040928_player/EN/
RealPlayer 10 is not affected, if you already have this. (Yes, we have those pesky security fixes once in a while too. sorry about that) Cheers...

Real 10 for OS X seems to be a big improvement over past software; a definite step in the right direction. However, the one big plus about it that I am surprised nobody has mentioned: it plays HE-AAC, which no other player (that I'm aware of) can do on OS X.

From some previous places in this thread:


You don't have to pay for it using QuickTime either, it supports full-screen playback out of the box, it's just not implemented in the GUI. Everything is easily changed via osascript AppleScript.

Long before UNIX-based Mac OS, a Mac OS application's AppleScript dictionary was the equivalent of it's CLI, and is often the only way to use some features.

There are also free (donation-ware) QT front-ends like Cellulo and a myriad of free and open-source players that wrap QT...


FAAD works fine on OS X, and the latest versions support HE-AAC. FAAD can used by XMMS, as well as MPlayer, both of which also work on OS X. There is also a native Darwin CoreAudio XMMS output plug-in.


I also don't want to knock the Real guys, but until the OS X community is provided with either a native QTX QuickTime extension, or a native binary library as an OS X Framework that would allow dynamic linking with third-party applications, it won't gain the user-support and popularity of other codecs.

Right now on Mac OS X, the only common video-file problems I have are lacking support from Real codecs and Microsoft WMV9, which are not supported via QuickTime extensions and don't seem to have libraries or Frameworks usable by software like MPlayer.

I haven't yet tried RP10, but I assume I read it's "QuickTime" support as it operates as a wrapper for QT that also supports playback of Real files, rather than implementing the Real codecs as a native QuickTime component. I really hope someone will tell me I'm incorrect.

Edit 1: Modified formatting and spelling.
Edit 2: doh.

Oh, sorry 'bout that. I saw it mentioned on another news site, and thought it was pretty new Never saw it mentioned here, though...



First of all, whether or not it's possible to play full screen with the QuickTime API (I know it is) doesn't matter; QuickTime Player, unlike RealPlayer and most other players, doesn't do full screen out of the box. Second, AppleScript and the command line are very different animals and allow you to do different things. Third, I'd say that most of those open source players have suboptimal UIs. RealPlayer 10's UI really is quite good.

Real seem to be very fond of 'choice'; I find this a welcome addition to the mac movie player field

How so? This is exactly what it does:



QT basic goes full-screen. I use the command-line for almost everything in OS X since I have bad carpal tunnel and it hurts my wrist to use the mouse, so while some features I find obvious aren't always enabled in an applications GUI -- but this doesn't mean it isn't supported. For most applications you never need to use the GUI or mouse at all.

And I was just making the point that AppleScript has certainly historically (and often still does) allow you to do things that aren't possible and often just aren't enabled and exported via a Mac OS applications GUI, but the support is still inherently present, such as QT Basic full-screen.

Don't limit yourself to what you can click, drag, and double-click.

And ... Real - fond of choice? How can I use Real media in DVDsp, QT, FC, or other OS X applications outside of RP? How can I use Real media in OS X with gstreamer or mplayer? Seems as if my choices are limited.

VLC 0.8 (for which there is now a beta) adds HE-AAC support. In fact, it's able to play the "48k aacPlus" stream from somafm.com, while RealPlayer is not.



Well, they do provide an encoding plugin for Quicktime, so that you can output Real files from say, Final Cut. But there is no decoding plugin for system-wide decoding support.


Well, there's the Real Quicktime component for encoding Real audio/video. For decoding, you're stuck using RealPlayer.

I'm not sure how one would go about encoding WMP content on a non-Windows OS, but MPlayer and VLC can decode everything except WMV3, in my experience.


You are correct; that is exactly how it works.

As a mac user, that is precisely what I should do. The fact that it is possible, using AppleScript, to make QuickTime Player go fullscreen makes it even more absurd that you have to pay for the pretty little menu to do this.

When commenting on the value of software, I usually consider what it does, not what it can. (If you merely consider the technical capabilities of a system and disregard usability, there are systems much more capable and powerful than a mac running Mac OS X.) So what if executing some obscure AppleScript gives you full screen playback? I explicitely stated that it was "For people who just want a no-nonsense movie player" that I believe RP is better than QuickTime. As a mac user you should appreciate the value of a complete, well-designed and usable package. I would still recommend RealPlayer as movie player for the novice or lazy user.


Please note the apostrophes and the smiley. I was not being serious. Loosen up; history and politics aside, Real Software aren't necessarily incapable of producing a usable application