Actually I believe that Real is the most popular web based format out there right now. I know Real got a bad rap in it's early years for completely taking over all of your media files and playing everything through Real and making it impossible to switch them back. I believe the latest RealOne player is actually pretty good, it's easy to associate ONLY the media files you want it to play back.
On a side note I was recently putting together a video encoding demo to send out to our clients showing the various formats and what they would look like at diffrent streaming rates. Real really shocked me, I was suprised at just how good the video actually looked compared to other formats at the same rate. Maybe Real needs a new ad campaign like Ford, Look again! A lot has changed.

I also find that Reals SMIL implementation is very capable and I can put together video + synchronized slides in a snap compared with how Windows Media does it. If it weren't for the hate mail I get when I use Real... I would stick to it. Just call me a coward I guess!

zoomplayer playes everything, wmp9, DVD, ra and rm, ogg, divx, etc.
this is a pretty versatile player, is fully customizeable and doesn't take over your choice of format, aspect ratio, etc like WMP does.

Real is also the only format I have found that lets you compress a two to three-minute video clip into something under 2MB with good results.

Given the number of dial-up connections still out there, anything over 2MB will not be available to a lot of people.

"Taking Over" is why I eradicated Real and Quicktime from my system. Quicktime was very difficult to get rid of. That left WMP which I despise because it desn't play very smoothly all the time especially when streaming.

One of the best was when I installed a version of Netscape Navigator a few years ago and it asked me if I wanted to install Real Player. I said NO and it installed it anyway.

Perhaps I will try one of the lesser known players mentioned above. In terms of files which are only available as Real or QT, I don't feel that I'm missing that much if I just don't watch them at all.

John

"Perhaps I will try one of the lesser known players mentioned above"

Beware these are hacked versions of Quicktime and Real, who knows what else it installs with the programs. That is why I would only install licenced versions of software that is made by the maufacturer. Real and Quicktime are both fine players, nothing worse than Windows Media Player, every software manufacturer wants you to only use their software for playing back media files. It is up to the installer to watch what they are doing when they install instead of just clicking next, next, next, next without reading anything. If you do that it is your own fault if all your media files get switced over to another player.

I'm not saying that 3rd party software developers can't make good software, look at winamp, but you have to be careful what you install. Looking at the webpage that was mentioned earlier for the Real player hack I wouldn't install anything from that site on my computer. It looks like a hacker/warez site take a look at the nice russian bride porn thingie on the top. Obviously not a reputable site.