Smart Web Video Discovery Highlights the Evolution of RealPlayer in Newest Version

SEATTLE, Dec. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- It's no fun to be the 192,546,243^rd person to see the "Gangnam Style" video, or to see President Obama's emotional speech to his campaign team days after everyone else. There's something satisfying about finding web videos early and then watching as the rest of the world discovers them the next day. The newest version of RealPlayer, announced today by RealNetworks, Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK), introduces a new smart web video discovery feature that will scour the internet and deliver content based on its popularity and freshness along with the personalized Facebook videos from a user's newsfeed that are shared by their friends.

In the world of free software, there aren't many products like RealPlayer. First introduced in 1995, RealPlayer has been evolving to meet the changing needs of its users for 17 years! Today, it is still one of the most widely used media players available. The 15^th version of RealPlayer that was released last year already has 26 million monthly active users who have watched 1.7 billion more and downloaded 630 million videos with RealPlayer. In the last 12 months alone RealPlayer has been installed 180 million times on PC and nearly 12 million times on Android devices. RealPlayer is also one of the most downloaded video players on Download.com where it received a five star rating from CNET editors.

Scott Uomoto, SVP RealPlayer, explains that the key to the longevity in a product like RealPlayer is to never stop innovating and making the product more capable.

"Our goal with RealPlayer is to build the ultimate media player for our users with the features and tools they want today. We know users want smarter ways to browse web videos and discover new content. We want RealPlayer to be the best way to find all the hottest and most user-relevant video content on the web, and the ideal tool for the consumer who wants web video entertainment, but doesn't want to sift through thousands of videos to find it." Uomoto continued, "We're not okay with discovering the latest video craze from a morning news show three days after it goes viral. We want our users to be the ones in the know, the ones sharing the video that's just about to go viral."

Users can browse videos based on channels like sports, entertainment and news, or just keep their eyes glued to the "New and Popular" section if they want to see the most popular trending videos and stay a step ahead of their friends. Best of all, once users find the videos they love, they can use the great tools and utilities already within RealPlayer to download, convert, bookmark for later or share them with friends. The web videos feature is currently being released in the US RealPlayer version only. Localized versions of web videos will be rolled out in 2013.

Key features added to the latest free version of RealPlayer includes:

• Web videos – bringing the latest and most popular videos to users.
• Optimized search experience – search, view and download all within RealPlayer.
• Video bookmarking – bookmark now, watch later.

"According to a June 2012 survey by Forrester Research, Inc., "Q2 2012 Forrester Online Omnibus," the RealPlayer brand has 84% awareness in the US.*," said Uomoto.  "The new RealPlayer (fully compatible with Windows 8 in desktop mode) and RealPlayer Express (for the modern user interface on Windows 8) – announced October 25, 2012 – will now, in combination, deliver the most recognized and comprehensive end-to-end video discovery and consumption experience to consumers on Windows 8."

Today, RealNetworks also announced a new version of its premium ReaPlayer Plus media player. In addition to other premium features, RealPlayer Plus 16 includes PlayPack, which adds several new codecs to the list of formats supported by RealPlayer, including webm, xVid and MKV. RealPlayer Plus 16 also includes Cleaner, which cleans music libraries by removing duplicate tracks, adding missing song details and album art, and correcting metadata. RealPlayer Plus 16 is available at www.real.com/realplayer/player-plus for $49.99.

About RealNetworks

RealNetworks creates innovative applications and services that make it easy for people to connect with and enjoy digital media. RealNetworks invented the streaming media category and continues to connect consumers with their digital media both directly and through partners, aiming to support every network, device, media type and social network. Find RealNetworks corporate information at www.realnetworks.com

*Based on % of US online population

SOURCE RealNetworks, Inc.