RealONE Player You've Come A Long Way, Baby Forrest Stroud
You've Come A Long Way, Baby
The RealPlayer client that combines RealAudio with the RealVideo, RealFlash, and new G2 technologies (more on this in a second) is a far cry from the RealAudio player introduced just over three years ago. RealAudio's mainstay has always been on-demand streaming of audio, but feature additions like live broadcast capability, real-time on-demand video capabilities via RealVideo, and real-time animation streaming via RealFlash have taken the client to new levels.
Additions like SmartStream technology (eliminates rebuffering), improved sound quality for 28.8 Kbps (stereo sound) and higher (near-CD quality) 'net connections, e-commerce support (ad insertion capabilities, for example), improved delivery technology, and easy publishing tools for adding RealMedia content to your Web site have had a similar effect.
Other features that have recently been implemented in RealPlayer include bandwidth negotiation (for customizing audio quality to your connection speed), multicasting support, pseudo-streaming for small audio files, multimedia synchronization, advanced plug-in capabilities, an AutoUpdate feature that automatically downloads the latest RealPlayer components for you, and Java integration capabilities.