Realplayer from Real.com has been around for a long time. It's always been a wide used format of video on the web and it could play music. Some recent updates have made it even more useful.
I currently carry a ton of my kids movies around on my 80GB iPod so that I don't have to lug DVDs back and forth to the car. This makes it super easy to convert them to iPod or iPhone format. Another format included is Zune which is Windows Media format. This will also work on Windows Mobile phones. There is also Apple TV, Playstation 3, Blackberry, Palm, G1, Sidekick plus more. It also has one of the fastest converter engines that I have seen, so you won't have to wait too long to take your movie with you.
The player allows you to browse online content and find videos to watch via Real.com, Rhapsody, or Rolling Stone. And of course, you can import your own music library and use it to play all your music, or rip your CD collection.
But my favorite feature is the Video Downloader. I have been using it for a few months to grab videos from YouTube and other sites that I want to view later or save to my iPhone. Sure, there are other programs that do the same, but I love that one this one has the converter built-in. It's simple and easy to use and can convert a video to many formats for many different phones and devices. A very cool button that says “Download This Video” pops up on videos as you watch on the web letting you know which ones are able to be saved. Of course you cannot download everything. It currently does not work with Hulu, or any of the good network shows, so don't get too excited. 🙂 You know there's that pesky copy write thing!
In any case I use this all the time, and it's now on all my PCs and my MacBook.
You can download the PC or Mac from on Real.com.
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