[BC] Media players (WAS:HD Radio Article)

[Alan Kline]

------ At 09:33 PM 2/26/2006 EST, The Most Honourable WFIFeng at aol.com wrote: -------
>But WinAmp isn't bordering on Spyware, like REAL does in its newer versions. 
>(Unless they've changed that policy.)
>
>One thing I dont' like about it, is that it completely *dominates* your 
>machine... taking away *all* media file associations from *every* other application 
>you have, by default.

REAL was absolutely infuriating.  I had been using RA8, since it's good enough for
the streams I listen to, and it wasn't as intrusive as the newer versions as far
as advertising and other junk.

What *was* intrusive was the way that Real insisted on trying to contact the mother
ship to force an update on me.  Even though I'd tried to disable the auto-update
in preferences, even though I'd tried to block any contact with real.com through
my firewall, RA *insisted* on trying to force the update.  I had to constantly 
be alert to cancel the auto-updates.

Then, someone on this list mentioned "Real Alternative" (Google it...) It's a
codec for Real streams that works with Microsoft's classic Media Player.

I installed that and uninstalled RA8 on all of our machines, and I've been very
happy...  Winamp supports RealAudio streams now, also... 

ak