> Even consider the likes of Winzip,
> Adobe PDF, Flash…. may not be standards but are certainly used in lots
> of places as defacto.

But those are different cases. Both ZIP (not WinZip which is just a program) and PDF are well documented standards, from companies that released the info and allowed free/open implementations, without ever sueing them or asking for royalties. Macromedia hasn’t documented SWF much, but they never sued the projects trying to reverse-engineer their format (or asked them for royalties).

Nobody knows what’s the case for RealMedia exactly, but I do know there are companies that paid in order to license the codecs. And I do know there are no open source implementations, so I guess royalties can be a problem.

> Setting this aside, we need to set the perspective, you need to
> first seperate Codecs and Streaming architectures apart. RealMedia is
> the Codec and Helix is the streaming delivery platform.

Yes, I do seperate them. That’s why I think the Helix Server is a suitable solution, but the RealMedia codecs are not.

> In addition Helix supports open standards such as
> MPEG-4 and 3GPP from the SAME platform.

I know and that’s great, but MPEG-4 is not a truly open standard (see my previous post for the explanation).

> This means any organisation developing a media player
> today have the capability to support RealMedia by using the RealMedia
> codec engine.

Without patent concerns, without paying royalties, with the possibility to make that implementation free / open source, and without having to license the codecs from RealMedia?

> There are other versions of the RealPlayer – include the
> infamous Real Alternative (see
> http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm)

But RealAlternative is just a bunch of Real DLLs hax0red together!

I don’t think that (or mplayer’s w32codecs) counts as “another version”…

Greetings,

Santiago Roza
santiagoroza[at]gmail[dot]com

Strong words! There is no advertising here, just pure respect for a truly open solution and personally I am a firm supporter of standards and how they evolve from properitary and defacto developments, you need to respect what is being offered. After all, all developments started somewhere as being properitary before they evolved into open wide spread use. Even consider the likes of Winzip, Adobe PDF, Flash…. may not be standards but are certainly used in lots of places as defacto.

Setting this aside, we need to set the perspective, you need to first seperate Codecs and Streaming architectures apart. RealMedia is the Codec and Helix is the streaming delivery platform.

Firstly, Helix is an architecture which allows the streaming of multiple media formats including “defacto” codecs such as Real, Quick Time, Windows Media to be streamed from a single platform, regardless of the Server OS. In addition Helix supports open standards such as MPEG-4 and 3GPP from the SAME platform. The key advantage here is that you don’t need to deploy separate platforms for each codec you wish to support, i.e. one for Real, one for Windows, one for Quick Time, one for MPEG-4, one for 3GPP. This allows you to support multiple codecs from a single platform and choose the right codec to suit your delivery requirement, whilst at the same time evolving towards open standards as the codec becomes supported on the destination platform.

Going further Helix is a full mesh architecture with server redundancy, unicast to multicast and multicast to unicast bandwidth splitting and archiving, plus a whole host of logging features which enable you to analyse usage patterns and billing. The open source Helix Community has further enhanced the position of the Helix platform by making the building blocks available via open source and licensing. This enables third party organisations to incorporate digitial media components within their solutions, from encoders, servers and media players and have the peace of mind that it will operate with the Helix platform.

In terms of RealMedia as a Codec, you are correct, it is of course the development of RealNetworks and has been offered in the open source – Helix Community since February of 2005. This enables organisations to take the codec and implement support for this into their own media players WITHOUT the need for the Helix Player or the RealPlayer. This means any organisation developing a media player today have the capability to support RealMedia by using the RealMedia codec engine.

With regards to your question about Helix Player and RealPlayer. Within the Helix Community we do produce two editions of the media player. This is entirely intentional. Helix Player offers an open source media player initiative with a streaming media decode engine pre-built into the code. You decide which codecs you wish to support within your Helix Player. This allows development organisations (typically consumer electronics organisations) to develop their own media player based upon Helix and incorporate the codecs they feel are relevant. Take a look at Reciva (www.reciva.com) and ROK TV (www.rok.tv) who have both implemented their own editions of Helix Player with codecs required for their implementations.

RealPlayer is built upon the Helix Player and incorporates the RealMedia codecs plus a whole hosts of features to complete the solution. It is the official solution for playing RealMedia codecs and as such represents a finished solution for individuals and organisations wishing to deploy a media player which supports RealMedia plus other codecs (from MP3, QT to MPEG-4 for example)

There are other versions of the RealPlayer – include the infamous Real Alternative (see http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm) , plus a whole host of editing tools from organisations like Adobe, Pinnacle, AVSMEDIA which enable the encode/decode of Real formats.

About your correction, I was referring to this phrase: “Using it with Cortado would insure that the client would be able to play it no matter what software the user has installed”. Since Cortado depends on Java, THAT solution (the one that was being discussed here) depends on Java.

David: please cut the advertising. No matter what you say, RealAudio and RealVideo are NOT open formats. They are propietary and patent-encumbered codecs.

If I’m wrong, please tell me why there is no (true) open source implementation of those codecs, and why there is no player that can play RealMedia, other than RealPlayer. And tell me why your open source Helix Player does NOT support RealMedia by default, while your non-open source RealPlayer does.

Thank you for a very informative comment. We actually did our first experiments with streaming using Real. Then, because of server pricing and becuse of a player that was gaining huge amounts of complaints due to an intrusive installer we abandoned it.

Now it seems like it’s time to reconsider. Right now I am taking a very long christmas holliday, but will for sure bring this into consideration when I return for work in January!

I’ve read these Blogs with varied interest and one thing that strikes me, is that you have completely FORGOTTEN the inventor of streaming media, RealNetworks.

RealNetworks is the only true, open standard, open codec, open server streaming media platform available on the market today. In 2002 RealNetworks introduced the World’s first, with the Helix Universal Server, supporting over 50 codecs including the industry top five – RealMedia, Windows Media, MPEG-4, Quick Time and mobile 3GPP all from a single Helix Architecture. The Helix architecture enables you to stream native Real Media, Windows Media, Quick Time, MPEG-4 and 3GPP from a single platform delivering to native media players, i.e. Windows Media served from Helix to a Windows Media player.

In addition, by choosing to use the RealMedia codec you reach over 450 million RealPlayer users, with RealPlayer widely available for PCs, Apple Mac, 3G and 2.5G mobile phones, Pocket PC PDA, Palm OS, Linux and Unix users. No other media player supports a wide range of playback devices and with a wide range of operating systems including a free download of RealPlayer.

To assist media companies, RealNetworks introduced in August the European Media Program – offering a FREE Helix Server Unlimited capacity and RealProducer RealMedia encoder software to ALL Media companies in Europe. This enables any qualifying media companies to use Helix Server software in RealMedia format completely for free! More information is available on-line at

http://www.realnetworks.com/info/emp/

RealNetworks is the recognised market leader in the new mobile 3G market, with 85 Mobile Operators in 43 countries selecting Helix Universal Mobile servers to stream both RealMedia and 3GPP formats to over 30 million mobile RealPlayer handsets. Customers include a Global agreement with Vodafone, Teliasonera, Telefonica, T-Mobile and O2.

RealNetworks openly supports standards and introduced the open source approach in 2002, through the Helix Community (www.helixcommunity.org) which has over 102,000 members to-date. The Helix Community makes available the Helix DNA Producer (for encoding) the Helix DNA Server (for broadcasting), the Helix DNA Client (playback) and Real Audio and Real Video codecs to developers and development companies globally.

The Helix Community has produced great advances in consumer electronics, including the World’s first consumer electronics WiFi radio from Reciva, Cambridge, UK (www.reciva.com) with utilises the Helix DNA Client. By using the Helix DNA Client this WiFi radio is able to play RealMedia, MP3 and Windows Media from over 10,000 internet based radio stations. This clearly demonstrates the power of Helix and the RealNetworks approach to open standards enabling companies to develop technologies which support multiple codec formats through an open software approach.

In addition, Helix Digital Rights Management (DRM) forms a core part of the Helix Universal Architecture, featuring a true multi-format DRM – supporting RealMedia, MPEG-4 and MP3 from a single application. The Helix DRM architecture is designed to add multiple formats as the market demands. Content is encrypted and delivered using the Helix Universal Architecture including Helix Universal Server – for encrypted streams and RealPlayer – featuring the Helix DRM client enabling multi-format content to be unwrapped and played on the playback device.

During 2004 RealNetworks introduced Harmony – the World’s first multi-DRM client software that enables DRM media from one DRM format to be interchanged to other devices. With Harmony, content purchased from iTunes stores can be synchronised with other DRM formats including Windows DRM, Apple Fairplay and RealNetworks Helix DRM music jukebox devices allowing content to be played on the iPod and iPod mini, and products from Creative Labs, Rio, RCA, palmOne, iRiver, Dell, Gateway, and Samsung.

RealPlayer 10.5 is the first consumer product to use Harmony Technology and RealNetworks have also integrated Harmony technology into the market leading Rhapsody music service.

If you’re looking for an open approach to media delivery and need to integrate multiple codecs and reach multiple media players, then the Helix Universal Architecture is the only true choice available today, offering the highest amounts of flexibility in terms of codec choices, operating systems for deployment and with the added advantage of open source initiatives you are assured you have the flexibility to build and design your own solutions which conform to a widely accepted and inter-operable standard.

Some questions to ask yourself.

1. Is there a Windows Media player or Quick Time player for Linux? or Palm? or Mobile phones? or Pocket PC?

2. Are you able to deploy your streaming platform on Linux or Unix?

3. What about DRM, how many codecs does it support? What operating systems?

4. What about delivery to mobile phones, can you do that from a Windows Media server?

5. How does your media player handle multiple DRMs? Apple Fairplay or Windows DRM?

6. What about open source, can organisations design consumer electronics and devices to work with your platform?

7. And, finally do RealNetworks produce an advert free RealPlayer? Yes, we do! It’s called RealPlayer Enterprise! Simple, easy with no “fancy” media features!

I would be happy to discuss any of these points with anyone drop me a line at:

djsmith[at]real[dot]com

Happy Xmas,

David J Smith
RealNetworks

For the player part in general we leave that to others, although there are both Linux and Windows player in existence using GStreamer.

Please come by #gstreamer on irc.freenode.net or contact me by email to talk further.

Using this server doesn’t mean you HAVE to use the Helix DNA Player: you can combine any Theora/Vorbis server you like (Flumotion, Helix, VideoLAN, others) with any player you like (Cortado, Helix, VideoLAN, Windows Media Player +filters, whatever).

No I don’t, so we should ask the VideoLAN guys.

They do have a “consulting services” page, and one of the companies that provide professional VideoLAN services has a couple of impressive customers:
http://www.anevia.com/customers.en.php
(like France Telecom or Deutsche Telekom)

And they also have a “We Use VideoLAN” wiki page, but the size of the organizations listed there doesn’t seem that impressive:
http://wiki.videolan.org/index.php/We_Use_VideoLAN