A real alternative.

Annoyed by the amount of audio and video online that requires the RealOne player? I am. I'm one of those people who absolutely refuses to install the RealPlayer on my PC because I don't need the hassle. So, I do without. But Sunday I found out about a free alternative that plays both Real audio and video formats. The Real Alternative codec and Media Player Classic, are available free as a package at the Kazaa Lite web site. I suggest you snag it before the goons at Real Media shut them down.

I've been testing the player out a little with audio and video from the BBC. It works beatifully with radio, even on my painfully slow connection. The video stream was naturally more problematic with buffering every few seconds, but it worked. It did manage to crash Mozilla once, but I don't intend to use to stream video anyway. [Link via Metafilter.]