News Microsoft settles with Real

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/10/12/microsoft_real_settlement/

 

For once I'm on Microsoft's side, if they can erradicate Real media player from our internet lives, great. Real should have fought MS by just concentrated on making a product that was good to use (E.g. Firefox), not just try and start a fight with the big gun itself.

 

Im with ms on this too, realnetworks are a bunch of scamming fools.

 

unfortunately amazon.co.uk still use real

at least amazon.com gives you a choice...

 

Real's streaming codecs are actually not that bad. Problem is, the client software is horrendous, and has a tendency to produce all sorts of ads and other assorted malware. Obviously that's their business model and their desired revenue stream, it's just unfortunate that it gets in the way so much that most of us can't stomach it.

What Real needs to do is produce a slim, workable client without Malware or RealAlerts or whatever they call them, and generate revenue (a) by licensing their codecs and (b) by a less obtrusive ad system

 

Also with Bill on this one, Real is ****, has anyone told them yet?

I really dont see the problem with MS bundleing Media player with XP for free?!?! Yes it does mean that most people wil have a preferance to that but who cares, its our choice!

I guess Casio are gonna sue them next because they give you a free calculator with XP

 

The issue is that if you have a dominant market position (like MS's >90% of the desktop OS market) and you start bundling extras with your product, it becomes nigh impossible for others to compete. Sure, FireFox has started to buck that trend, but only because of all the negative publicity IE has had for its security flaws.

MS uses this tactic a lot - they more or less killed Netscape when they started bundling IE, for example.

By (ab)using their dominance in the OS market to steal market share in applications markets, MS then has a huge advantage. IE's near ubiquity has enabled MS to shape the Web - so many sites aren't W3C compliant because they use the 'advanced' features of IE, which further strengthen's MS's position when a consumer can't see their favourite sites properly using another browser.

In the Real case, MS has pushed WMP onto every desktop in the land, so if you were a content producer wanting to maximise usability of your music video / movie trailer / internet radio show / whatever, what would you choose: to license your encoding / streaming engine from Real, where many consumers might not want to / be able to install the necessary client software, or license your encoding / streaming engine from MS, safe in the knowledge that the output will be universally viewable?

The $700 million isn't just a random figure pulled out of the air - Real must have demonstrated some hefty losses in revenue as a result of MS's practices.

HOWEVER, having said all of the above, I think in a fair fight WMP would cane Real anyway, since Real sucks so hard you could give it a straw and tell it to fix New Orleans.

Also, I do have mixed feelings about the anti-competition suits that keep getting slapped on MS - Say what you will about them, but you can't deny that Bill et al have worked hard to make their OS the most successful in the World, and yet they are punished for trying to leverage that success.

 

If real wanted to improve their market share they could really do with dumping all the crap that they include - it's as almost bad as gator...

 

Tuff luck is all I can say to Real really, if people dont like your product its your fault, if it was a lot better the WMP then people would probably use it, simple as that. Its the consumers choice as to what software they use, were not forced to use WMP its just conveiniently there and if we didnt want to use it I doubt Real would be anyones first choice as an alternative.

Fair play to MS for being sly gits really, get over it Real

 

And what about winamp? will they sue M$ next?
If they do, every company will start sueing M$ for some cr**p software that they created and there is a equivelent included in windows to get easy cash. I am by M$ side on this one, if you dont like WMP then use another media player, there are tons of cool and simple and lighter and easy to use MP.
REAL is sh**t software, i used it once an said "cara**o!!!!! nunca mais vou instalar esta me**a no meu pc" wich translate something like "f**k never again i shall instal this s**it on my pc". i now use WMP and winamp depending on my mood.

 

Yeah, Real sucks the proverbial big one. I hate them. I hate their software. I hate their media formats. And I have to install them on every PC here at work, because of our online courses.

Edit: Wooteh, 2000 posts!

 

Oh so wrong, but oh so true...

 

W00t, I'm famous!

Anyway, what strikes me as odd is this:

I don't quite see why that has happened tbh. I don't think this has happened before hasn't it?

I do like realplayer SOMETIMES, but I hate the fact it takes longer to load and you have to sign up to use it, annoying if you are resinstalling the OS.

 

its be cause u have to PAY for real media just to use the program
else u will be hammered with ads and additional features flooding and blinking constantly in your task bar
if real was free and adfree like many other players and alternate software

firefox is popular because its free and offers other features IE does not
same with winamp
and they both do not have ads and dont ask you to subscribe to everyfeature they offer everytime u login

 

This made me think of this pic.....


I hate REALPlayer

 

Yep. Real just sucks. Anything using that (or quicktime, though I'm slightly less opposed to that) I simply refuse to bother with. Don't get me wrong, I hate WMP too, but at least it's not all retarded and proprietary. Well, it is, but having it bundled at least makes the proprietarity (umm, yep, pretend that's a word) easy to deal with.

Luckily almost all the video files I watch are DivX/XviD so I could care less if I have WMA/WMV codecs installed, which is all I'd ever use WMP for.

I hope Bit now goes and sues Real for the waste in bandwidth for covering such a retarded lawsuit. And everone who read the news to sue them for the wasted five minutes of their life.

Go american justice systems! Promising to screw over every US citizen before they die! Though in this case, I'm actaully irriated they screwed over Microsoft, which is normally something that would cause me to jump for joy. Lesser of two evils, I suppose.

 

It's up to Microsoft. If Real made an operating system, they would ship it with RealPlayer, no?

Why isn't someone going after Sun for including Java with Solaris? (I assume Solaris comes with Java preinstalled). It's because nobody cares, that's why.

Ok, bad example.

 

RealPlayer Sucks.