Article about the three secuirty flaws/holes with the patch links is available at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/35390.html

RealPlayer has security flaws? No way dude! Lol, it isn't surprising considering all the trouble Real software gives everybody. Thanks for the info Capt.

You can also get the patch at RealNetworks site. I dl'ed it but it gave me a lot of trouble and kept locking up. Then, all of a sudden it didn't. So, who knows. Also, if I have Windows Media Player, is Real Player necessary? What are the differences? --Viv :)

File Types Supported: application/smil, application/streamingmedia, application/vnd.rn-realmedia, application/vnd.rn-realplayer, application/vnd.rn-realsystem-rjs, application/vnd.rn-realsystem-rjt, application/vnd.rn-realsystem-rmj, application/vnd.rn-realsystem-rmx, application/vnd.rn-rn_music_package, application/vnd.rn-rsml, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-realaudio, audio/x-pn-realaudio, audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin, audio/x-realaudio, image/vnd.rn-realflash, image/vnd.rn-realpix, text/vnd.rn-realtext, text/vnd.rn-realtext3d, video/vnd.rn-realvideo

Viv, RealPlayer just uses a different file format, that's all. It uses .rm files whereas (did I even spell that right?) Windows media uses .wmv, .mpg, and so on and so forth. You only need the dumb thing if you are playing .rm files, otherwise it's useless, bloated, and just plain crap. If you find you HAVE to deal with .rm files, my advice is to ignore any of the "official" Real players and download a program called I think "RealAlternative". It doesn't ignore your preferences and steal file associations like RealPlayer does, it isn't bloated, in fact it is pretty small. It is also the only player that will also play RealOne specific files (Don't ever download RealOne, just trust me on this). The ability to do so is a great help. In my own personal opinion, which I admit no one asked for, lol, I don't see any reason to even bother encoding files in RealPlayer format. I have never seen anything better about the format like you see with Divx and Quicktime, it just seems so useless. And considering it MUST use such a bull--it program such as RealPlayer in order to use it makes it even more undesirable. Is there really anyone who likes it? If you do, speak up and let me know what is so good about it, I'm just curious really. I see that format do nothing another format can't.

I love RealAudio format. When I encode songs with MP4 (128kbps) vs RealAudio (104kbps), the RealAudio version is superior in sound and has so much more depth. Unfortunately, RealPlayer is a bloated piece of crap. And RealAudio format is almost unsupported among portable music devices.