I tried Real Alternative for a while, but after a bit it refused to play "Real" media any more, which was all I needed it for. According to various tech forums, this is quite a common problem; none offered a solution that worked for me, so I dumped it; and with some regret, re-installed RealPlayer (an old version, though, more easy to domesticate than recent ones). It gives me no particular problems, except when I try to play something made by fashion victims who don't understand the importance of backwards compatibility.

We could probably do without irrelevant platform snobbery in this discussion; we could do with a reply from Dave Oesterreich, though. Has he tried any of the suggestions made before this thread wandered off into the usual repetition of old stuff that has been said many times before?