RealPlayer is the behemoth of the media player arena. It's been around a long time and has a wide range of features and functionality.

The player's file support is huge and it can cope with practically anything you throw at it, both in terms of video and audio. It also has its own proprietary RealAudio Lossless format for encoding audio without any loss of quality.

Like iTunes, RealPlayer comes with a digital music store built-in, but the options in terms of number of songs and the artists available are not as impressive.

As you would expect, CD burning is integrated and includes all the usual features such as normalisation of track volumes, crossfades and the removal of gaps between tracks.

You can also generate analog recordings from external sources, such as your own voice (via a microphone) and your old record or tape collection.

And you can transfer audio directly onto your portable MP3 player thanks to the built-in support for numerous devices including Palm, Nomad Zen and the iPod.

RealPlayer SP (v12) is a major upgrade and a preview of the forthcoming technology. New version enables you to convert video, share with friends through social networking sites and more.