Real Networks has announced the public release of their new Real Player available on their website. We covered the beta release at the beginning of the month along with 20 beta accounts that went fast.
The new player focuses on bridging the gap for video between the desktop and the internet by letting users save and share video from any location on the net. The new player adds a “save this” button to any video playing in your browser. When you click it, Real will download the file in the background as you surf regardless of format. When you play the video back, you’ll have the option of sharing the video with friends, which emails out a link to the original. With the free version of the player you can burn the videos to CD, playable on most DVD players. Paying for the professional version lets you burn directly to DVD. A future version will let you push the videos to a media player instead.
The most notable use for the player will be on the video giant Youtube, which already attracted a series of third party download tools, including our very own. Real Player will recognize and respect DRM restrictions by not downloading restricted content.
The player is still for PC only, but they expect to have a Mac version out later this year.