Alternative to RealAudio

[MaxDepth]

Yes, I have googled and found about four different ways of listening to .rm and .ram files. But which to choose, is there a favorite of the bunch?

 

[Gunslinger08]

Real Player and the files it plays are viruses and should be wiped from the face of the earth.

 

[MaxDepth]

Originally posted by: joshsquall
Real Player and the files it plays are viruses and should be wiped from the face of the earth.

True. But I am looking to play streams from my local college station

 

[Staples]

Originally posted by: joshsquall
Real Player and the files it plays are viruses and should be wiped from the face of the earth.

I have seen a few Real Player threads over the past few months and this seems to be the consensus about Real Player however, I have to ask if anyone has used it over the past 4 months? I have been using since early in the year and it is not at all the devilish player it used to be. I'd give it another try if you have not used it lately.

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: Staples

Originally posted by: joshsquall
Real Player and the files it plays are viruses and should be wiped from the face of the earth.

I have seen a few Real Player threads over the past few months and this seems to be the consensus about Real Player however, I have to ask if anyone has used it over the past 4 months? I have been using since early in the year and it is not at all the devilish player it used to be. I'd give it another try if you have not used it lately.

People whine about Real but then happily use WMP, which isn't the world's friendliest audio player either.

Having said that, I would recommend RealPlayer 8 instead of RealOne. In my brief experience, it seemed less intrusive, and does not overrun your system, as everybody loudly protests about RealOne. You literally can decline just about every option during installation. Some geeks just can't help but whine about ad-supported software as "the devil".

The only drawback I can see with RP8 is that when you exit the application, it pops up a notice that you should upgrade to RealOne.

 

[Gunslinger08]

I see no problem with WMP. It's fast, doesn't use a ton of resources (ala Winamp 3), automatically downloads codecs, and never crashes on me.

 

[WinkOsmosis]

Originally posted by: joshsquall
I see no problem with WMP. It's fast, doesn't use a ton of resources (ala Winamp 3), automatically downloads codecs, and never crashes on me.

Does yourl WMP play Real streams?

 

[Staples]

WMP does not play Real Audio but I have used it for everything else since a few months after 7.1 came out and I got a faster hard drive (5400 was a lot faster than a 4200 Bigfoot). RP used to be a total pain, nothing compared to what WMP ever was but it is just as good as any player nowdays. Hell, I'm using it right now to stream MP3s since WMP doesn't do it and I have not installed Winamp in 3+ years.

In fact, I am using RealOne Player version 2.0, maybe one was bad (never tried it) but 2.0 is just fine and it doesn't take over anything. They have this browser in it but it is very fast, I always have it closed (you only have to close it once and it stays closed) and jut the player open.