RealPlayer (was: Re: [Gllug] BBCi)

[Pete Ryland]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 10:22:16PM +0000, Dylan wrote:
> On Thursday 20 March 2003 22:05, Doug Winter wrote:
> > On Thu 20 Mar Dylan wrote:
> > > Another RealPlayer question - does any onle else find the player
> > > itself can be terminally unstable sometimes? To the extent of
> > > requiring a reboot?
> >
> > I find it hard to imagine how realplayer could do anything to cause you
> > to need to reboot.  Unless you are running Windows? :)
> 
> Well, I'm on SuSE8.1, and no - RP doesn't do anything which leaves the
> system requiring a reboot, but... I find that it will (either or all of)
> (a) refuse to connect (even to a local file); (b) spontaneously abend; or
> (c) play a stream (or local file) for a few seconds before freezing -
> requiring a kill.  The only way to get RP working again in this situation
> is a reboot.

It's an appalling piece of software.  The fact that the audio degrades
before the video does is not good design, not even mentioning all the loud
pops and crackles.  And when the audio does get cut off, at least on my
system, it doesn't come back, even when the signal is perfect again.  After
stopping/starting the stream, it comes back though.  It's really a pity the
audio & video streams are not sent separately, or the BBC doesn't use a more
free format.  Under good (normal) conditions it's usable though.

TVless Pete
-- 
Pete Ryland
http://pdr.cx/

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