I made the grevious error of upgrading my RealPlayer to Real One to watch a video it couldn’t read. Not only did it not make that video watchable, it BROKE a number of RA files that I had on my hard drive…funny thing was, they were still watchable with a very old version of RealPlayer (5.0 I think) that must have come with Win95, or even earlier. I’m not sure how it got there.
A friend suggested I downgrade to an earlier version of RA since the new ones, well, suck. He sent me a link (to the official Real.com site, so it’s not “warez”), and I installed it. This one broke EVERYTHING. No RA files, audio or video, would play, nothing would stream, nada!! And the worst part was that I uninstalled the old version of RP, so not even that would work anymore!!!
Anyway, after spending all morning messing with stuff, I bit the bullet and reinstalled RealOne. This fixed the streaming problem and some of my videos, but the older RA files still don’t work. Plus, my WAV plugins are busted now…IE won’t play them at all (prompts me to download instaed), and Netscape plays its crappy default Java player. I checked under Preferences/Applications and it just gives the association as “PLUGIN”, with no option to FIX it. COLOR=firebrick]HELP!!![/COLOR]
On Chapter 6 of the RealPlayer Manual Version 8 (discussing streaming) the Real.Com site states:
"PNM is an older protocol but many clips are still around in that form. Any newer, RealSystem G2, content will have RTSP:// before the address of the clip. "
Is it therefore possible that the older version of RealPlayer that you installed could not play the streams because most of the current streams available online are in the RTSP format (And the version you tried could only recognize PNM streams? RealPlayer G2 came after RealPlayer Version 5, IIRC)?
And you mentioned “watchable” .ra files? Aren’t ra files audio files only? (versus .rm, real media)?
In the various installations/uninstallations, is it possible that your older files may have been renamed with a different extension? I seem to recall having a .ram/.rm/.ra file that didn’t work but when I changed its extension to .ram/.rm/.ra it played fine (sorry, don’t recall specifics) - My point being, have you tried a different extension?
The real.com site has pretty extensive documentation for current and older players.
try this,
go to control pannel, hit the “add/remove programs” and then remove realplayer from your system and use one that isnt a complete piece of crap.
divx, windows media, and quicktime are all better than realplayer.
note thats just my personal opinion, but I won’t install that program on anyones pc let alone my own.
Right, RAM for video, RA for audio. It’s the older RA files that aren’t working with RealOne. When I try and play one (locally off my HD) I get this message:
I hit the “More Info” button, it offers to download codecs for QT, MP3, VIVO and a few others…but not RealAudio. I did hit “check for updates” and installed the realaudio 1.0/2.0 – no good.
Changing the file extensions didn’t help, either.
I’ve been doing that, unfortunately I only have RP8 (which doesn’t work at all) and the newest RealOne (which won’t play the old files.) I’m not sure if RP8 came before or after G2. Unfortunately I uninstalled the one RP that would play the old files (I think it was 5.0) and I don’t have an install copy. (It would take over my computer every time I played it, though.)
I agree that Real SUCKS and I don’t want it on my system either, unfortunately I haven’t found another player that will recognize its file format! Hmm…maybe I should change this question to, “Is there another media player that will read RA/RAM/RM files?”
(It would take over my computer every time I played it, though.)