The ongoing PC music player battle continued Monday. RealNetworks is expected to launch the latest version of its Entertainment Center at its annual streaming media conference in San Jose.
The newest application being offered is the RealDownload 4 –- which the company acquired from NetZip –- a virtual music butler that will go out on the Internet and retrieve music. The entertainment player also includes an upgraded version of the RealJukebox and RealPlayer.
The announcement comes as RealNetworks, which has dominated Microsoft's Window's Media player and AOL's WinAmp, has seen its lead in that market begin to shrink. Still, nearly 90 million people have downloaded the last two versions of the RealPlayer.
This packaged suite of software signals a new move in PC players, said Jeremy Schwarz, senior analyst for media and entertainment for Forrester Research.
"As these different applications start to come together, I think more people will begin to see more people using all of the players," he said.
A recent Forrester study found that 56 percent of online users are using some sort of media player, but only 13 percent were using jukeboxes, which help users manage their personal music files.
"What is significant is that Microsoft and RealNetworks seem to be bringing functionality for different products together," Schwarz said. "That helps people manage their music by dealing with streaming, download, and playlists. By making these tools easy to use and removing the difficulties of dealing with multiple formats, more mainstream users are going to start using all the players."
The Entertainment application offers new services that should help users better maintain their entertainment files.
The player gives users direct access to over 2,500 terrestrial and Internet radio stations, by including embedded links directly in the player. Before, the stations could only be accessed through Real's website.
The media search function has also been beefed up to return better results. If users are looking for a particular interview or clip, the engine will now call up just the section desired instead of pulling up the entire video.
The jukebox now automatically formats music files from a hard drive into a compatible codec for portable devices.
