RealONE Player Serving RealPlayer Content Forrest Stroud
Serving RealPlayer Content
Listening to and viewing RealPlayer files is just great for the majority of us, but RealNetworks has designed their technology with another audience in mind as well. Developers wanting to create and serve their own RealMedia content are taken care of with a line of products designed specifically for creating (RealEncoder) and serving (RealNetworks Servers) RealPlayer files.
The encoder is freeware and allows you to create and host your own clips utilizing pseudo-streaming capabilities on any type of Web server. However, in order to stream clips on the Web in real time you'll need to either download the freeware Basic Server client or purchase the more advanced Basic Server Plus client, which costs $695. (The high-end server can also be downloaded for a free thirty day evaluation.)
The freeware Basic Server offers many of the same features found in the commercial server, but it is not eligible for phone support, does not include RealFlash streaming animation, and lacks some of the more sophisticated features of the commercial server release.
