Real Announces New Players For Linux, Mac

RealNetworks has announced RealPlayer 10 versions for Mac OS X and Linux, which includes exclusive deals with Novell and Red Hat.

Available in beta, the newest RealPlayer from RealNetworks enables Mac OS X consumers to enjoy hundreds of hours of audio and video content in many of the major Internet media formats, including RealAudio®, RealVideo®, AAC, QuickTime and MPEG. Also included in the RealPlayer for Mac OS X beta are an integrated browser window, advanced video controls and graphic equalizer. The RealPlayer for Mac OS X beta will be available this Wednesday, June 30th, for free download at www.real.com/mac.

RealNetworks also announced today that they have formed an agreement with Red Hat to ship the completely open source Helix Player with Red Hat’s desktop products. Red Hat will also offer a no-cost upgrade to RealPlayer 10 for Linux to Red Hat customers upon their initial installation of the Red Hat Desktop when the player is available later this summer. As a result, users of the Red Hat Desktop will be able to enjoy a wide variety of programming from corporate training videos to movie trailers to news directly on their Linux desktops. Further, Red Hat is contributing resources to help qualify the Helix Player on its platform, a process expected to be completed this summer.

Similarly, in an expansion of partners RealNetworks also announced that Novell has agreed to make the RealPlayer 10 for Linux the default media player for RealAudio, RealVideo, Ogg Vorbis and Theora codecs. Additionally, Novell is contributing resources to help qualify RealPlayer on its Linux desktop.

More information can be found here on RealNetworks’ Website.