In addition to ripping, sharing and converting videos, the most recent update to RealPlayer SP allows users to quickly trim clips without affecting video quality. The player is still bloated, unfortunately, but most folks will find the new tools easy to figure out. [Real]
Real’s new RealPlayer SP software, currently in beta, adds functionality to rip YouTube and other streaming videos from the Internet and get them onto whatever handheld you choose. It works well enough, but it’s also crammed full of unnecessary features. More »
Yes, OK, we called the software lame and poked fun when it earned that inevitable injunction, but that was just too predictable to get all earnest about. Well, RealNetworks might’ve been playing a long game.
Last week a judge put a temporary ban on the sale of RealNetworks’ DVD backup program RealDVD, claiming that it violated the DMCA. The court has decided to uphold the ban indefinitely, and judging by the tone and nature of the judge’s statements, it doesn’t sound like they’ll ever change their mind.
After being oh-so-predictably sued by six movie studios, RealNetworks is now just as predictably banned by a judge from selling its weirdly anachronistic DVD-ripping RealDVD program. At least until Tuesday, so the judge can review the filings to determine just how boneheaded it is.
Almost reflexively, six studios have filed suit against RealNetworks for their brand-new DVD copying software. RealDVD, as it is (was?) called, was tepidly received on account of crippling DRM which only allows for viewing of a ripped DVD on one PC, precluding the portability that might account for someone wanting to rip a DVD in the first place. That uselessness is precisely why these suits are so interesting; it’s difficult to see what the studios—Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios, Warner Brothers, Columbia Pictures, the Walt Disney Company and Sony— actually think they stand to lose.
Unlike other DVD backup software that has succumbed to movie industry pressures, RealNetworks’ RealDVD gives you a new way to copy DVDs to your computer caked with so much DRM that you’ll question why you went through the trouble in the first place. (But maybe that’s the point.) Fully approved by the DVD CCA, RealDVD rips DVDs to your hard drive complete with CSS encryption…before they’re layered with an extra topping for RealNetworks’ DRM.
