Monday, October 07, 2002

Good God, man, I just want the player!

So, I download a .rm file of some weird radio controlled car. The car has another, smaller car that can drive in and out of the ass end of the larger one. The site offers a video of this. So I download, and discover I have not yet installed a player for real media files. I bring up real.com, and that one vein in my forehead bulges out, and I start developing a headache, because I know I'm going to be here a while. See, real.com likes to rearrange their site every once in a while, and while they do offer a free player, they make absolutely ZERO mention of it ANYWHERE and their ENTIRE FUCKING WEBSITE. You have to go pretend like you're going ot pay them 20 bucks for the plus player, and there, in a low-contrast colored button, about the size of an inch of pencil, is the button for the *shhhhh*..... (whispers) free player. Of course, clicking on the *shhhhh* (whispers again) free player leads you to a page showing you how great the 20 dollar one is, and off to the right is this (much smaller) pane saying you can get this other player with a lot less features that isn't anywhere near as good as our other player but it's free so download that one if you want to be dissapointed by a crappy player. And of course, the download is managed by a stupid download manager that nobody uses, but you still have to use it at least to get the real player. Oh yeah, and the free player has big ads everywhere, and an "important announcement" bar that pops up once in a while, regardless of whether you told it to show or not, advertising the 20 dollar player....


You know what I want? I want to play that .rm file. that's it. I want to be able to play real media files. I don't want it to manage my mp3s or play my cds or burn cds or act as a browser or play any movie type besides real, and I don't want to create or edit real media files. I want to play them. period. Where's *that* player? Please, for the love of god, somebody write a <1 meg program that *only* plays real media files.

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