I hate Real Player

When I turned my PC on today, as soon as Windows started, a program started that had only “finishing installation” (or something like that) for a title, and a progress bar. It finished installing before I could do anything and put up a dialogue saying I should restart in order to finish installing it.

I was about to freak out, thinking I had my system hacked somehow last night before shutdown, and whatever trojan/spyware combo I got was flashing on me. But a little poking around led me to the program that was being installed. It was actually Real Player updating itself.

Now, I don’t have any good thing to say about Real Player. I only installed it a few months ago so I could play one stupid presentation, and though I regret having done so I was too lazy to uninstall it. I just never thought it’d be such a lousy, nosy app enough to give me such a fright. RP didn’t even identify itself with the installing thing. The name the install window and the process (“upgrdhlp”) showed in the task manager just gave no clue at all about connections between what was happening and RP.

I wonder whether the people who made this stuff were stoned when they did it or if they were so ashamed of the monster they created that they thought it’d better go unnamed in the user’s system.

Is there any reason at all this player is still around? I know some news sites stream their content in real format, but I think Quicktime and Media Player can do just the same thing.

To quote the #rpgclassics topic

http://www.rpgclassics.com/chat/chatrules.shtml | TD uses Real Player || this is a blatant lie || ha ha ha || he he he | ho ho ho || hä hä hä || Shut up

Just Say No

I love real player. :frowning: It works where other programs fail. I just wish it’d work with 64-bit >:O

That’s why you use Real Alternative.

RealPlayer still exists because its the only show in town when it comes to streaming audio at different bitrates depending on bandwidth available at a given time.

Valid, but do you hate real players?

I remember when I had Real Player, it was when I was first getting used to using a PC and way before I learnt about Real Alternative. I used it for everything and it was awesome: It bugged the hell out of me all the time, it usually cut videos and music short in the last few seconds and for some twisted reason, all means of uninstall had completely vanished into the air. God what a fucking bitch.

And don’t even get me started on Quick Time.

What’s with Quick Time, SE?

I got Real Player, but only when I found out that Windows Media Player won’t play all the types of video formats. But I still mainly use WMP, as I don’t like the RP command setup much.

On a related note, recently, my computer started bothering me with news of a WMP update being available. At first I ignored them but they kept popping up. Finally I decided to give it a try.

I found the new WMP format to be just plain ugly (Black and Blue? And yeah, I know you can change the ‘skins’ but I liked the original one just fine.) Worse, I couldn’t find the way to play videos on it, only MP3s. I’m sure there must be a way, but any media player that I can’t get to do what I want right away isn’t worth my time. I ended up doing a System Restore to get back the old WMP, and while I still get the ads for the update, I’m firmly ignoring them now.

Will, that’s the strangest thing I’ve seen about players. WMP is supposed to open videos the same way it opens mp3’s O.o

But speaking of user friendlyness, I think Winamp’s the best on that part. Which gave me the idea for a poll.

You could, you know, download a media player that doesn’t suck ass.

http://agora.rpgclassics.com/showthread.php?t=17701

True, true. <3