Why is Real Media video so poor..

[FourWheelDrift]

...in quality.

I have never viewed a streamed Real Media video that hasn't been grainy, juddery and not in sync with the sound. Low bitrates but no improvement on speed quality.

Even with a Broadband connection a 150k stream is useless. I have just tried to watch this one - http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/sport/academy/tennis/mc/becker/kick_serves/128k.ram

And it's like watching a slide show through the bottom of a glass with a 2 sec sound lag.

I've always hated it, utter crap.

I wouldn't touch RM with a very long barge pole but why do so many websites use it when they could use WMV. I know Lord Bill of Seattle is into everything but at least a WMV is small, plays back fine, has good compression and no sound problems.

[Ballistic Banana]

yep, know what you mean, isnt grainy for me just a bit blurry at times and like you say like a slide show. Bloody annoying and like watching a 70's jap film thats been dubbed over

BB

[anonymous-user]

I dread to think how much the M$ licenses would cost the BBC to stream WMV. I reckon they must have one or two media streaming servers.

There's also the fact that you limit the number of potential viewers.

But, the server side of RealMedia has been open sourced IIRC so there could be improvements in the pipeline.