Last year 15% of the downloads from this site were RealPlayer (about 70% were Quicktime), and so far this year Real has accounted for less then 4%. With almost everyone having Flash installed I thought I’d test out the format for myself.
I’ve replaced the RealPlayer format with flash on all posts so far this year, I’ve supplied the code if you want to embed it somewhere else. I’d love to hear if it works for you and what you think.
15 replies on “Playing with Flash: Is RealPlayer dead?”
Just a small question John, does the flash player cache the file locally after it’s been downloaded once? Otherwise this might end up putting your bandwidth through the roof if people view things more than once.
Good effort, by the way. If it works for Google and YouTube, you might as well do it 🙂
In my opinion, RealPlayer only really works well for the publisher. It means that people can’t copy and steal the work and claim it as their own (easily). While I appreciate the hours of effort people like you put into this (and the financial strains) for little return, the internet is increasingly becoming a more personable environment. If people don’t want RealPlayer – which the statistics would show, yet like to watch flash format streaming (ie YouTube, Google Video), then that will probably increase your reach, including adding your videos to YouTube and generally give your viewers something more to be happy about.
Keep up the excellent work. I prefer the Quicktime, but I would certainly look at swf over RealPlayer.
lol I think I was the full 15% using Real Player! At least I’ve got a new laptop now which I assume can manage Quicktime! Long live this site!
It’s not 1998 anymore. Can the RealPlayer. 🙂
Good job.
I think its a good Idea. We dont have to wait to download them now.
Realplayer contains spyware anyway. But with some people using Realalternative, is it really necessary to get rid of it? As some use it to obtain the smallest of the three downloads.
There is no copy protection in Real Player, at least if you know how to do it you can easily download everything you want. I dont like it, because its mostly poor quality.
I welcome your decision switching to flash.
I was probably that 15% 😛 The reason why I used it because I was on a slower connection at the time and it was handy, but I’m finding myself using Flash more.
🙂
Real Alternative is ace, it is worth mentioning.
Personally I find the Quicktime version much easier because it loads inside a Firefox tab. Another plus is the lack of compression (a pet hate of mine, weather it be JPEG or RM). I would rather you suck with Quicktime, but Flash defiantly seems to be the way forward.
P. S. For those of you who don’t like RealPlayer because of the spyware, the version on bbc.co.uk is made especially for the Beeb.
Doesn’t worry me. Just so long as it’s something with a readily-available codec for Linux. 😀 I think Flash works just fine.
I don’t really mind because I use VLC media player – so it’s fine for me.
It should be quicktime all-the-way. Nothing else can touch it compress/quality wise!
I don’t even have RealPlayer installed on my computer anymore! It’s totally obsolete. I prefer Flash to stream media online because on my computer Quicktime would take a while to load up and it bloats Firefox’s memory up a bit. But I definitely prefer Quicktime for saving it on my computer, better quality and it works with more things.
Like you can’t even save Flash videos (well you can, but it’s not as easy) and when you play it with FLV player, you can’t always resize or skip when playing. But with Quicktime, it’s easy to save and when you play it with Quicktime you can always resize it bigger and seek. And Quicktime is more compatible with iPods, my Xbox, editing software etc.
The new realplayer is great! It is a crappy format but, it allows me to do everything – even download all video formats (even when embedded in streams (like i did off a webcam) ^_^