RealPlayer has made a lot of enemies. It’s a free media player, which is nice. But RealPlayer likes to display pop-up advertisements, and it has a history of collecting information about the media files you play with it, leading some critics to classify it as both adware and spyware. When PC World compiled a list of “The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time” last year, RealPlayer was number 2. (The top offender was AOL.)
But occasionally, you may need to play a file that uses one of the proprietary RealMedia formats, such as .rm or .ra. In that situation, are you forced to use RealPlayer? Not necessarily. On a Windows system, you can use Real Alternative instead. Real Alternative is a codec pack that enables you to play RealMedia formats with Media Player Classic. You can download both Real Alternative and Media Player Classic from the Real Alternative page of freecodecs.com.