Why Do Universities Love RealPlayer?

While earning my B.A at Northwestern University, I took a half dozen film and media courses where each and every video linked to from the Blackboard CMS was always a RealPlayer video. Of course, Quicktimes were the standard of the Mac worshiping Art Department, but that was the exception to the rule.

Six months after graduation, I’m researching the market for education services, and I’m learning about all kinds of exciting things happening - especially the explosive growth of engaging video lectures available online. Educational video is well on its way to becoming a historical vector as large as mp3 music.

However, my RealPlayer experience was far from an anomaly.

It turns out that RealPlayer is a smash hit with academic institutions. Especially big, renowned Universities. Take this story, for instance: UC Berkeley even made a deal in 2004 to encourage 80,000 students to sign up for the RealNetworks Rhapsody music store. Hmmm.

This prolonged love affair is troubling, to say the least. Especially when you consider that community colleges are more likely just to post links to Youtube videos, since they’re not being courted by the RealNetworks sales people. (I imagine the company must be staffed solely by salespeople, since they obviously have a policy against employing developers or designers.)

So, I’d like to propose a new law, or at least a rule of thumb:

The more prestigious the university, the worse its choice of video player.

With the one notable exception, of course, being Harvard.