Fenton-J-Cool

Here's the thing: Nowadays, simplicity is elegance. The days of content-less, flashy websites are gone. Look at the #1 visited site on the entire world wide web: Google.
If you root through all the garbage that Real has going for it, maybe, just maybe, it could be a feasible media player. But it's not. It's bogged down with so much garbage that no one could ever conceivably use (you're not alone in that boat, you see it all the time. Worse only than Real is MusicMatch Jukebox).

Look at Winamp 5. Copy their source code, rebadge it, and call it your own. Then you'll have a successful media player. Play, pause, stop.

Simpler still, and more popular still (<- key phrase) is QuickTime. Play and pause. That's all people want.

Bottom line: People don't want Realplayer to make us breakfast. We have kitchens for that. I don't want Realplayer to schedule my meetings until 2007. I have a day planner.
Just make a program that will play movies, nothing more, and nothing less. Then, maybe one or two people will use RealMedia. That is, if they can get past your reputation.

I have refused to install it for years now, no matter how badly I want to see a movie. It's all been downhill since RealPlayer 7.



Edit:
Oh yeah. I forgot all about that. There is nothing on the face of the earth that enrages me more than a program that takes over file extensions, ESPECIALLY without asking. Worse still is a program that takes it back once you reassociate it with your favourite program!
I have a simple, 1.5 megabyte program called Winamp 2 to play mp3's, which is only the size of about 10% of my screen. It sits happily in my system tray, taking next to no resources and interfering with nothing. I don't want your program to play my MPG's, mp3's, avi's, or do my taxes. The only thing I would **EVER** install RealPlayer for is a RealMedia file that I would kill a family member to see. Even then, I'd uninstall it right after.

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wra