Hello.

I for instance am getting sick of RealOne, and I read about the Helix platform. So the question is, does this allow anyone to make a player that plays all the stuff RealOne does, minus the bloat?
And if that's the case, has anyone released a working player that supports all the Real Codecs, SureStreaming, etc...

I think I saw something called "Real Alternative"... I don't know where is it now hosted...

Check out Media Player Classic, it plays almost everything, including Real Media.
U can find it in the downloads section of www.doom9.org

well... media player classic still needs a realplayer installed... but yes, basically it works

well, I want to get rid of RealPOS eternally. Hasn't anyone made a good Real Media player, or perhaps some ACM codecs and video codecs for Windows Media Player, that'll allow it to recognize Real Media.

Well, I have been searching a bit, and here:
www.ekinox-team.com
They have available the Real Media 9 codecs for download, so you don't need to install Real One to use Media Player Classic.

It seems that "Real Alternative" is just a bundle of the Codecs + Media Player Classic.

Oh, the page is in french, and it's basically about converting DVD to RealMedia9.

I tried to get a real alternative to run but it didn't work. I got the Real Media 9 codecs from this french site and Media Player Classic. After installing the codecs, I started MPC (you know what I mean ), made a tick in the checkbox Real Audio (under the tab formats) and tried to play a stream from amazon. The progress bar went on, but there was no sound. I tried all available audio output options but none helped.

No way around installing crappy Real player first and then removing the exe? The codec dlls seem to be in the right place, also the reg keys exist but maybe this codec pack install doesnt create some necessary info?!

Look at this link, there is the way to install Real Player, backup the codecs, erase the program, and restore the codecs:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....&f=1&t=6489&hl=