I've read everywhere that Mplayer won't stream Real Player 10 files. I assume that Mplayer does not have the codec lib at this time.

We can install the latest Real Player for linux and stream as much as we desire. My question: why can't we install Real Player 10 to get the correct codec and work it with Mplayer. I am curious why not.

I thought the reasons were obvious until I came accross the macosxhint below on the web. Is there any way we can borrow this logic and then free ourselves from Real Player, which I cannot stand to use. I started to translate Real Player RPM into tar last night, but I could not get it to work before I realized how late it was:

From the Macosxhint:

" I use MPlayer in the Terminal quite often to record Real-formatted streams. But many of the newer formats of Real Player are not yet supported in MPlayer. So here's a simple method to add the latest Real Player support to your MPlayer (CLI).

1. Download MPlayer (CLI version). Download the file "Last Mencoder and MPlayer Binary," and install.

2. Download the free Real Player for OS X. Click on the "Free Real Player" link in the upper right hand corner. Install Real Player.

3. Locate the Real Player application and right-click and select "Show Package Contents." Navigate to RealPlayer.app -> Contents -> Frameworks -> HXClientKit.framework -> HelixPlugins -> Codecs, and move all the codecs in that directory to /usr -> local -> lib -> mplayer. You may have to create that directory first.

You should now have full support for the latest Real Player formats in MPlayer. If you want to add even more formats, go here.

Do not download the DR5 as it is old, instead download the first DATED release -- for example 08/09/04 -- and grab the file listed next to macos-gcc3-pb under the All_clients column. After downloading, discard everything that is not a ".bundle" file, then move all the bundles into /usr -> local -> lib -> mplayer. Make sure not to replace the files you just copied from above."

AFAIK the law is still out on the legitimacy of MPlayer using the RP codecs, but the one thing we do know is that there is no api provided with them, so it's hard to know how to use them, as they're a big old black box to any developer. older codecs like rp8 and rp9 are not only older, so been poked at a lot more, but are simpler in make up, so should have been easier to get around. it also wouldn't be legit for them to actaully distribute those codecs, as they are not GPL'd.