From...

by Jon L. Jacobi

(IDG) -- I became addicted to RealNetworks' RealPlayer last summer while listening to radio broadcasts over the Internet. I tuned in daily to the Cardinal and Cubs baseball broadcasts, following Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa's home-run epic in real time. The quality of the broadcasts -- even over my V.90 modem -- amazed me. There were only minor bits of distortion, not enough to detract from a sporting event.

Streaming audio and video are hot commodities on the Internet these days, and Real Networks is the biggest player. Its free RealPlayer G2 is the default reader for RealMedia, which is rapidly becoming the de facto Internet streaming media standard.

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But if you check the RealNetworks Web site, you’ll find there's a $29.95 upgrade available: RealPlayer Plus G2. Is it worth it? If you use RealPlayer often, and want to save content and tweak playback the answer is yes. But for the majority of occasional users, the free version will do just fine.

Enhanced controls and search capabilities

The most obvious Plus enhancements improve viewing of poorly recorded content. It includes picture controls for adjusting brightness, color balance, contrast, and sharpness. RealNetworks also throws in a ten-band graphic equalizer to help you tweak audio quality. One less useful but cool-looking feature is an audio analyzer, which shows you a spectrogram, waveform, or EQ graph of the audio currently playing. All these are nice, but most people will never use them.

Keeping track of RealMedia content on the Web is also easier with the Plus version. First and foremost, you can record content to your hard drive for later perusal. A placeholder allows you to mark where you left off in a broadcast and rejoin it later at the same spot. There’s also a scan presets feature that works much like the scan feature on a radio -- letting you search through your presets until you find an item of interest.

Installing RealPlayer Plus G2 from a CD-ROM was painless. The only interaction required was agreeing to removal of the free version first. The Plus player automatically installed to the directory where the free version had resided.

Although RealPlayer Plus G2 has a nifty AutoUpdate feature that keeps your player's components up to date, it's not completely automatic. While AutoUpdate will inform you of major upgrades, you have to select Check for Upgrade from the Help menu to keep up with minor revisions. You're given a choice whether to upgrade before download occurs.

Not having a truly high-speed connection of my own to test high-quality RealMedia, I went to my editor -- the lucky owner of a cable modem. According to him, the audio quality over a high-speed line is truly CD-like if the broadcast allows it. Many broadcasters, however, deliver content at lower fidelities.

My only major gripe about RealPlayer Plus G2 is its lack of advanced transport controls. You can start, pause, stop, or set a location to continue from after pausing. But there are no controls for looping, fast forwarding, slow motion, or playing a small section of a file. Adding these would give great weight to the argument for upgrading.