RealPlayer SP is the evolution of the long-running RealPlayer software, which has become a multi-limbed beast of a program: It's a media manager and player, along with a packaged web browser, a subscription and a la carte music store (Rhapsody), a gaming store (Real Arcade), an audio recorder, and now a streaming video ripper/converter with ties-in to social networking sites. It is at the moment Windows only, though we're assured a Mac version is forthcoming. The beta comes in two versions: One is free, and the other costs $40 and includes H.264 conversion, DVD playback and DVD burning.

The SP stands for Social/Portable, so you can get a hint of where they're going with all this. In addition to RealPlayer itself, the software integrates a button to rip video into your browser (Firefox, Chrome, and IE are supported, Opera is not, no word yet on Safari). This new addition includes a converter to pretty much every portable video format you could imagine, from BlackBerry to Symbian to iPod to Zune.

Where RealPlayer SP is convenient is in this video conversion, especially if you've got a more niche phone or PMP (and I certainly do). Normally, conversion to Zune-supported video is kind of a pain in the ass, but RealPlayer SP handles it easily and well. For newer devices like the Palm Pre and BlackBerry Bold, RealPlayer SP can pass the converted video right through to the player, while it's able to go through iTunes to get video onto an iPhone or iPod touch. Older or less common devices, like my BlackBerry Curve 83xx and my Zune, are still supported, but you'll have to copy the new video files over manually.

The problem with this new iteration of RealPlayer isn't the new features, it's the underlying RealPlayer media software. iTunes, Zune, MediaMonkey and WinAmp are all better and more full-featured media jukeboxes, and unfortunately, Real's new focus on streaming video is new to that category of software but certainly not new to any of us. Hell, Firefox has had extensions that can do the exact same thing for years, with admittedly weaker codec support.

I also wasn't thrilled with the conversion speed or efficiency. Real claims a 1x conversion time, meaning 1 minute of video will take 1 minute to convert, which is actually quite pokey. A 3.2MB music video took 3.5 minutes to convert, and I ended up with a 6.6MB file. Sure, it's not a big deal for such a tiny video, but it feels like it should have been far snappier.

RealPlayer SP is also tied in to various social networking sites, but it's pretty half-assed: For Twitter, it just provides a link to the page of the video you downloaded, along with some prime advertisement for Real that kind of makes you sound like a jackass. The default tweet is "just downloaded so-and-so video with RealPlayer!" followed by a link to the RealPlayer download site. So get ready to follow every single one of those Twitter posts with "Clarification: I do not work for Real."

Really, the new features in RealPlayer SP aren't bad at all. It's a good idea to integrate streaming video ripping into a media jukebox, and RealPlayer SP does about as good job at it as we could ask. But the overall package needs some work: RealPlayer SP is way too bloated to work as just a video ripper/converter, and as a media jukebox it's outdated and cumbersome. Real has a good idea here, but RealPlayer needs more than some flashy add-ons. We'd love it if Real would put out the SP features in a simple applet, and leave off the browsers and media managers that we don't give a damn about.

So who should actually use RealPlayer SP? If you're a BlackBerry or Zune owner who uses Windows, loves YouTube and is confused by the multitude of third-party video converters, RealPlayer SP would be an excellent choice for getting video clips on your phone. [Real]

It's back up now, but a message on the idfnadesk channel's profile (Age: 60, the wit) explains:

We were saddened earlier today that YouTube took down some of our exclusive footage showing the IDF's operational success in operation Cast Lead against Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip. Fortunately, due to blogger and viewer support, YouTube has put back up some of the footage they removed.

Naturally, the comments sections turned into a firestorm of hateful back-and-forths before they were disabled, which was probably a condition for re-upping the censored videos.

It's a propaganda campaign, pure and simple. Even though you can see far worse in the chillingly note-perfect AC-130 stage in fucking Call of Duty 4, there are people dying in those buildings, and no, not all of them are terrorists. No war in history has been fought without the warring parties attempting to control the story with info dissemination. But using a forum like YouTube, a public community where smartbombs destroying buildings in a populated city are adjacent to sleeping kittens and 12 year olds' rants on why homework sucks, and where said 12 year olds (literally, and those of 12-year-old intellect) can fill the comment sections with racist hate-spew—is this where we draw the line? [idfnadesk - YouTube]

Oh, and any of said hate spew in the comments here will be grounds for an immediate banhammer. And it has a gun camera and its own YouTube channel too.

WiMAX seems like an ideal delivery method, given the range it covers and its beefy bandwidth, so what Building B wants to do is definitely possible. But, the service launches in the fall, and WiMAX won't exactly have most of the country blanketed by then.

Either way, their vague assertions without hard specifics leave Om Malik (and us) "inherently skeptical of their claims." Topping off our saucer of skeptic's milk is the fact that their targeted ad partner is Claria, better known in its past life as Gator Corporation, proprietor of the eponymous adware client that plagued tens of millions of PCs in the late '90s.

The bottom line is that we'll believe in the One True Box when it's sitting atop our TVs—we've heard way too many empty promises from far too many prophets to be true believers before then. [Building B via NewTeeVee/GigaOM]

Version 0.9.2 was rolled out yesterday, and its makers say lots of its performance problems have been solved, particularly with the Windows version which is said to use 50 to 75% less RAM than previous versions. It's free. Get it now.

This is a cool piece of software, pretty much a Tower of Babel for all video formats, and it automatically links up with BitTorrent, too. Even though it's available for Windows, Mac OS X. and Linux, we are a little frustrated that the Ubuntu version hasn't been released yet. – Charlie White

Product Page, Free Download [Democracy, via boingboing]