A Real Alternative

Do you play video files on your PC, such as Real Media files, QuickTime files and the various Windows Media formats? If you do then you have probably installed the various players needed to play the different file formats. Well I have big news for you, there is now a media player called Media Player Classic that changes all this, because it plays ALL the media types I mentioned above, along with all major sound file formats.

Media Player Classic looks like version 6 of Windows Media Player, and you would be forgiven for thinking at first glance it is, however it is not, it's an open source written software package, that is a far better version of Windows Media Player 6, and of course, it's Windows XP compatible.

This means for me as a user of these files, I

• no longer get bugged when loading a QuickTime file to upgrade to the pro version,
• no longer have to wait for Real Player to load (which can take a while) or go hunting on their website to find the download for the free player
• get a better set of audio & video codecs (to decode some media file types)

You can download Real Alternative, which includes Media Player Classic here: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_alternativeness along with loads of codecs and other programs such as QuickTime Alternative.

Give Real alteration / Media Player Classic a try. I'm sure you will come to love it as a great media player!

Legal MP3 Downloads

As I said in my last post, I felt that MP3 legal download companies should not DRM encode their files so you can only do certain things with it - which sometimes means that you can only copy to a portable device 3 times, which is fine if you have a 20gb device, but for those on a a 256mb device that can be a problem if you like to change your muisc taste all the time!

Ideally if you use a legal download service you should be able to choose the format you download the file in eg MP3 or Windws Media File, if your MP3 player is compatible with those, or in Apple iPod or Sony Atrac3 format. The best way for these companies to achieve this, is by offering a conversion filter once you have downloaded the file in to the format you need, for syncing with your device.

If your device supports expansion cards, that adds another problem into the mix as when you transfer a legal file on to it, it may not play on your device, as the file thinks the device does not have the licence to play on it!

One day all formats will be supported on all devices, and when you purchase a track you will be able to listen to it on whatever device you want! without worrying about the license!

Digital Rights Managment

Bought myself an MP3 player at the weekend, a Thomson Lyra 256MB player with SD/MMC expansion. I thought it would be easy to get working, and I would be able to join a legal MP3/WMA download service and transfer tracks to my new player. So on Sunday evening I joined Napster, after a 9 meg download (which took forever on Dial up) I installed Napster only to find out it didnt support my device, then I discovered that it works with any device that works with Windows Media Player - no problems there my player does. I then tried to install the Napster plugin for Windows Media Player, that didnt work, so thought I best upgrade to WMP 10 another 11 meg download (and a long wait for the download to finish). Still couldnt get the WMP plugin to work.

Come Monday morning I was not a happy bunny, as I had spent money on this MP3 player in order to listen to my MP3 collection, (which I could as they happily transferred to the device) and purchase legal downloads, and transfer them to my device. I go into Napster in WMP and it says that it can't detect it. I thought to myself why can you not detect it when it is installed on my PC. So I click the button to get Napster expecting to have to sit through another 9meg download. Turned out that this download was a WMP plugin for Napster. So I installed it and Napster worked in WMP. Great I thought, lets buy a track to put on my MP3 player, so I bought the track, and couldnt transfer it to my device due to a licence problem. Worked out the best way to get a file to my device was to burn to an Audio CD, then rip it back to the PC and transfer. That worked great, but didnt solve the problem.

Tuesday came, and I went to Thomson's site for my player, hoping to find a place to report this problem, I did not find a place, but while looking through the support pages I saw a firmware update for my player, and was overjoyed as it added support to my player for DRM encoded WMA files, from legal download providers. So I installed the firmware, a lengthy process, that involved formatting my device, and finally my Napster download worked on the device. I'm now going to purchase more MP3 files that way.

I wish that legal MP3/WMA download companies did not DRM enccode their files as we the consumer should be able to play our downloads on any device we like, without have to sort out licensing problems!!