Is RealPlayer Badware? Grab This Free Replacement

I fell into the RealPlayer quagmire minutes after I sent some friends a link to the sandhill crane webcam. They were kvetching because the webcam uses RealPlayer to stream the media -- and no one wanted to install the bloated, ad-encumbered program.

I don't blame them. Except for when some loopy editor asks me a question about RealPlayer, I keep it off my system.

I'm not the only one with this attitude Tom Spring, one of our news guys, recently reported that anti-spyware group StopBadware has RealPlayer in its sights. Read RealPlayer Gets Slapped with "Badware" Label for details.

Instead of bothering with the official version of RealPlayer, I have an alternative--a special version that doesn't have adware or other annoyances.

Welcome Back to RealPlayer

Here's the skinny: You can safely download a special version of RealPlayer, one that hasn?t a bit of adware, never nags you, and doesn?t litter your system with icons. It's not stripped down, either; it?s just missing all those annoyances.

You can get this version of RealPlayer from a perfectly legit source: the BBC. What's cool is that few people know that this version is different. The unofficial story, according to one source, is that the BBC?s charter prevents it from ?showering their viewers with craptastic ads for random American companies,? so to get the BBC to Webcast in RealPlayer format, RealNetworks had to produce an ad-free player. Whether that story is true or not, the RealPlayer that the BBC Radio site offers is the real thing, just without the adware. Read the details here and then download the player. (You'll eventually land on a Real.com page, but you'll be downloading the BBC version.)

But don't install the BBC RealPlayer yet. Tomorrow I'll give you a step-by-step for the cleanest, leanest installation.

Talkback
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