"Videos load 20 percent faster, and you can watch in full screen. You no longer have to watch videos online; you can download them and watch them when you want or burn them to a CD," RealNetworks spokeswoman Carol Rogalski told XBIZ. "Watching in the RealPlayer is great because you can speed up and fast forward videos, watch them in full screen and save them to playlists just like people do with songs."
The new RealPlayer supports playback, downloading and recording for popular streaming formats, including Windows Media, Real and QuickTime. Consumers can download multiple videos simultaneously with the new RealPlayer, and also can start downloading in the middle of watching a video and the entire video will be captured. It will only download or record video that is not protected by Digital Rights Management systems.
Feedback from users has been enthusiastic, according to Rogalski.
"They love it, and they want it now, because it’s easy," she said. "A button pops up above a video on the Internet — unless it’s protected by DRM or in one of the formats we don’t support, and we support all major formats — and you just click it to download. You can close the web page and move on to something else if you want."
RealPlayer will first be released for Windows, and that version will work with both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Plans call for a Mac version to be released later in the year.
The beta version of the new RealPlayer will be available at RealPlayer.com.
