You can achieve exactly the same result within iPlayer, by hitting the link in the bottom of the iPlayer for ‘modem users’. That then (in the UK) gives you Real Player embedded within the page.

However, you can rewind, fast-forward, etc, all the content within iPlayer, and you get *much* higher audio quality using the Flash version. I’d be interested to know why you want to ‘bypass’ that and still use Real. Please feel free to drop me an email.

It all started at university 6 years back where Flash was disabled on the computers, there was no iPlayer and only real player was available. Launching the real player in the browser is really slow, buggy and crashes on several browsers. Plus you can’t cache the player and hence can’t go back to hear say the last 5 minutes of a programme.

The new iPlayer is good perhaps I have just got use to playing programmes on the real player

Aha. Well, if Flash is disabled…

The new iPlayer’s quality is great, and the additional functionality (full forwarding/rewinding) gets over most of your issues. None of my machines have Real Player on them any more except the work one, and I’m happy that I can still listen to BBC network radio on them. But yes, you do need Flash… (grin)

If anyone would like to bypass real player all together because like me they wouldnt ever install such an abhorrent and awful piece of software. The solution is to temporarily disable javascript in your browser settings and refresh the page this provides you with a direct link to the real player content url which can then be player in a program like Real Alternative or VLC player http://www.videolan.org/vlc/.

enjoy