At Digital Hollywood today, Rob Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks, gave a presentation on the company’s new upcoming RealPlayer11, which has generated some buzz for its video-sharing download capabilities as well as ability to plug into iPod directly. It was the same spiel Glaser gave at the D conference couple of weeks ago, and when I interviewed him then.
But after more consideration, here are some more fundamental questions/observations for him and the company, especially as it is at best a peripheral player in the whole online video revolution going on right now, and trying to get back into the mix.
– Just because a piece of streaming online video doesn’t have a DRM protecting it, doesn’t mean it is not copyrighted. How do you address that?
– 1.5 million RealPlayer downloads daily? Really? Where is the growth coming from, and what’s the real breakdown in terms of growth subscribers?
– What’s the future of RealVideo and RealAudio format? No major media company is planning anything new with those formats, and in facts tons are moving away from it….why should we care about the new RealPlayer when we are not even using any of those formats?
– Sharing in the new player: you mean we install the new RP11, need to download the video first (say from YouTube), wait for that, then play it in RP11, then share from that software, and then the friend at the other end gets an e-mail linking back to the original online source? Why not just use YouTube’s (or any other site’s) sharing functionality to share it, and that’s 50 times faster.
– What’s to prevent YouTube and others to offer the download functionality? They will when they can do it legally.
In the end, RealNetworks has more fundamental issues to address than a software update here and there. Yes there’s the games part, yes there’s Rhapsody, but the format war was lost by Real a few years ago. Microsoft money can only carry them so far.
Our Digital Hollywood coverage is sponsored by PaymentOne’s 2007 Digital Media Payments Report
Please get your facts:
Just because a piece of streaming online video doesn’t have a DRM protecting it, doesn’t mean it is not copyrighted. How do you address that?
-You cannot
1.5 million RealPlayer downloads daily? Really? Where is the growth coming from, and what’s the real breakdown in terms of growth subscribers?
-China & India. Check out http://bt.btchina.net/ and all other Bittorrent China Sites
What’s the future of RealVideo and RealAudio format? No major media company is planning anything new with those formats, and in facts tons are moving away from it….why should we care about the new RealPlayer when we are not even using any of those formats?
- See above. Cingular Video uses it for their online streaming solution and many major carriers are adopting RM.
Sharing in the new player: you mean we install the new RP11, need to download the video first (say from YouTube), wait for that, then play it in RP11, then share from that software, and then the friend at the other end gets an e-mail linking back to the original online source? Why not just use YouTube’s (or any other site’s) sharing functionality to share it, and that’s 50 times faster.
- No, you can download while you are watching, also choose to download it after watching for the first few minutes and then choose to watch it later. You can burn the downloaded clip to VCD/DVD/ Ipod/ MP4 players
What’s to prevent YouTube and others to offer the download functionality? They will when they can do it legally.
- Youtube is an online service, which means they do not have a desktop presence. RealPlayer fills the void.
In the end, RealNetworks has more fundamental issues to address than a software update here and there. Yes there’s the games part, yes there’s Rhapsody, but the format war was lost by Real a few years ago. Microsoft money can only carry them so far.
-The real question, who pays you to be a "journalist"? Get the facts.
Last week, Rafat Ali posted a number of questions to me http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-dh-some-open-questions-to-rob-glaser/. Because it would be helpful for the RealPlayer community to fully understand the answers, I am posting my responses at http://rws-blog.rhapsody.com/realplayer/2007/06/response_to_raf.html.
I couldn't believe you; you are incridible You are the number one forme .Thank y ou very very very much.you created download from you tubereally I'm very excied sorry.I don't know what tosay just feeling thanks
Thanks for these questions. I was waiting for someone to ask them.