Review of Real Player Plus

I received an email last week about receiving a free copy of Real Player Plus, as long as I agreed to do a review. After doing a bit of research to make sure it wasn't a scam, I replied back and agreed to review it.

There are two versions of Real Player. You can download the free version, or you can pay a one-time fee of $39.99 for the advanced version, otherwise known as Real Player Plus. Now, I bet you are wondering - why should you pay $40 for a program when you can get the free version?

From what I understand, although the free version does let you download videos, Real Player Plus saves the videos to your hard drive, which allows you the view the video at any time, even when there isn't an internet connection.

Why was a food blogger asked to review a program that downloads videos? There are plenty of baking and cooking videos out there, You Tube, Metacafe, Nestle, and Kraft, just to name a few. Since Real Player Plus allows you to save the videos to your hard drive, this means you do not need an internet connection to play them back. For those of you who do not have internet access in or near your kitchen, this tool is very useful.

I tried it with the four sites I listed above. You Tube, Metacafe, and Nestle worked fine. When you roll your mouse over the video, a box with appear that says "download this video." You click it and soon you have the video saved. Now, for some reason, it wouldn't play back the Kraft videos. I'm not sure if it's in a weird format or if Real Player Plus only downloads videos from certain sites. This is disappointing because Kraft has some pretty good videos for beginners.

Another feature that seems promising is the ability to put these videos onto your Ipod. Now, I do own a MP3 player that supports video, but it is not an Ipod. I decided to connect my device and see what happens. Although the device was recognized, when I clicked on the media, the program froze. Maybe it's only compatible with Ipod?

I give Real Player Plus 4 out of 5, meaning it is good but isn't something that you must own. If you are someone who learns better from seeing a visual presentation rather than simply reading it and have no internet access in your kitchen, or if you want to put last week's episode of your favorite show on your Ipod so you can watch it while working out at the gym, then Real Player Plus is for you. However, if you are like me and have a laptop with wireless internet in the house, your computer is within easy reach of the kitchen, or your MP3 player makes the program freeze up, then this program isn't necessary.