New Versions of Real and Quicktime Alternative

Martin Brinkmann
Aug 18, 2006
Updated • May 11, 2013
Music and Video
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Apple's Quicktime and Realmedia's Realplayer are two heavy - some would say bloated - programs that use lots of system resources while they are running or playing media files. They also occupy quite some place on the hard drive and since they run on system start by default, slow down the system on top of all that as well.

One would assume that they at least start up faster than players who do not make use of all these options but that is not the case as well. Programs like VLC Media Player start up faster.

It may therefore be a good idea to look for alternatives that you can run instead, that do not slow down your system that much and speed up the loading of media files.

Real Alternative can play all media files that Real Player is capable of playing including streaming content and content on websites. Quicktime Alternative has the same functionality as Apples Quicktime software. What makes both alternatives great is that they do not have background processes running and that they do not contain advertisement, forced registration offers or other annoying things that the official tools include.

Both players use less resources than the original players which is great if you are using a computer that is not running on the latest hardware. I suggest to uninstall the original players and install the alternative versions because of that. Quicktime Alternative is also working with iTunes if you install those tools in a certain order. First Quicktime Alternative, then iTunes + Quicktime, uninstall Quicktime, install Quicktime Alternative again.

If you are however interested in the original QuickTime you can download the latest version of QuickTime from the Apple Support website.

For Real Player, you would have to visit the Real Networks website to download the media player from there to your computer.

Please also note that both QuickTime and RealPlayer alternatives have not been updated for quite some time now, which means that it is no longer advised to install those on your system. You can however install a media player like VLC or SMPlayer instead which support all the formats supported by those two applications. Just install the players on your system and you are ready to play all formats that QuickTime and Real Player support.

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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on August 1, 2010 at 12:43 pm
    Reply

    Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?

  2. Mike J said on August 1, 2010 at 2:58 pm
    Reply

    Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.

    1. Martin said on August 1, 2010 at 3:39 pm
      Reply

      Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.

      1. Mike J said on August 2, 2010 at 2:30 pm
        Reply

        huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
        Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.

  3. myo said on August 1, 2010 at 5:52 pm
    Reply

    yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.

  4. Kishore said on August 13, 2010 at 2:55 pm
    Reply

    Error:
    Buidling font Cache pop-up

    Solution:

    Open VLC player.

    On Menu Bar:

    Tools
    Preferences

    (at bottom – left side)
    Show settings — ALL

    Open: Video
    Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
    Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”

    Save
    Exit

    Re-open – done.
    Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts

    Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc

    1. Martin said on August 13, 2010 at 3:10 pm
      Reply

      Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.

  5. javier said on August 14, 2010 at 1:50 pm
    Reply

    @Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
    I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.

    Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?

    I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…

    /thanks
    /j

  6. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:38 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,

  7. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:39 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.

    No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure

  8. Ted said on October 22, 2010 at 3:57 am
    Reply

    Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me

  9. Evan said on December 8, 2013 at 1:48 am
    Reply

    I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).

  10. Mike Williams said on September 6, 2023 at 1:26 pm
    Reply

    Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?

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