Helix Player 1.0 (alpha) available [LWN.net]

The alpha release of Helix Player 1.0 is available. See the release notes for information on what's in this release and the known problems (e.g. no ALSA support). Of course, if you want to play certain proprietary media formats, Helix Player won't do it for you, but the alpha version of Real Player 10 is available from the same place.

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Helix License

Posted May 19, 2004 20:37 UTC (Wed) by andrel (guest, #5166) [Link]

Have Real changed the license terms to meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines, or do they still have a non-free license?

Helix License

Posted May 19, 2004 21:08 UTC (Wed) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

I don't think it really matters; without the completely proprietary plugins, the player is worse than Juk/Rhythmbox/Muine/Zinf/etc for audio and GStreamer/Xine for video.

Helix Player 1.0 (alpha) available

Posted May 20, 2004 1:46 UTC (Thu) by samj (subscriber, #7135) [Link]

Actually this *is* good news for Linux. Yes Real have been evil when it comes to advertising bordering on harassment, but it's no wonder when they're competing with Microsoft (who offer pretty much everything Real does, for free). It seems they've realised that offering a media player for Linux is the way to go given there will be more and more Linux machines appearing which won't (any time soon) be supported by Windows Media. This is a good opportunity for them to make inroads where Microsoft can't, and in their doing so we get a qualilty, commercially backed media player. Yes, there are alternatives, yes they may be cheaper/better/faster, but I doubt they will be as readily adopted, even if only because Helix has a well known name behind it.

I think Real should be afforded more support in this venture than we've been affording them. Yes, at the end of the day it's all about the bottom line, and yes, it may be too little too late, but let's just wait and see.