This rant somewhat stems off a post by Stefan on Ring Nokia regarding VLC Media Player. I started with Symbian S60 with the 6620, but I recall when the 36XX Series came out, I showed it to my dad and said, "How cool is this, it has a memory card!"
When I got my 6620, AT&T was just fixing to launch it, and when they did, they were advertising streaming video on it, via RealPlayer. I thought this was cool, but I was on Cingular. Turns out Real had some sort of agreement that only AT&T customers could use this, so I never got to experience streaming media.
With my 6682, hungry for streams to test out the faster EDGE, I downloaded RealPlayer onto my PC, with the hopes of somehow getting some of the links onto my device. No dice. All I ended up with was Musical Adware. Freakin "Real" player my foot. I felt like I was using NetZero internet service, that’s how many random ads were popping up all over my screen.
Now I’m onto the N80 and N73, both of which (in the 3rd Edition of the S60 operating system) STILL have this worthless and God-awful software embedded. No streams work on it other than Real streams, and no one can find anything other than dated CNN and CSPAN feeds.
Meanwhile, on my desktop, I have since migrated to Winamp, one of the best media players out there. Yes, it’s now put out by AOL, but there’s SO MUCH streaming content, and ALL FREE! There’s Shoutcast streams, both video and audio, there’s AOL TV, and plenty more. I can pull up a constant feed of commercial-less Family Guy anytime I want to.
Now I look back to my phone and I realize how crippling RealPlayer is on these devices. I have to ask myself what the crap Nokia signed that they’re still, several years later, putting this worthless software on their phones? Quite honestly, it would probably be better to just not have ANYTHING on there, than RealPlayer.
Anyone else with the same frustrations? Any suggestions? Anyone else would give their left…er…..arm to see a Winamp Mobile for S60 devices?
