Listen to the voices

Follow these steps to make RealPlayer the default media player for .rm audio file links on your Macintosh.

1. Depending on how your Internet browser is set up, RealPlayer might start playing immdiately, or it might simply place a RealPlayer file on your desktop. If the RealOne Player application doesn't start, hide applications and look on your desktop for a file called demo.rm. Double clicking this file will start the ProStream. If the file is on your desktop and either has a blank icon or your mac asks how to open the file, you might not have RealOne Player installed on your Mac.

2. Ascertain that RealPlayer has been installed on your computer. To do so, launch Sherlock and discover if your Mac has a RealPlayer folder (typically located within the Applications (OS 9) folder). If you cannot find the RealPlayer folder, download the latest version and run the installer. For OS 9 users, the latest RealPlayer is version 8. Version 9, called RealOnePlayer, can be installed on OS-X Macs.

3. Once you know RealPlayer is installed on your Mac, start the program and go to VIEW:PREFERENCES. Click on the UPGRADE tab. Make sure "Always play RealNetwork's Media with RealPlayer" is check and click OK.

Note: If you follow the steps outlined above and Real Media files still don't play, you might want to check your settings within Internet Explorer. To do so, follow the steps below:

Internet Explorer settings

1. Launch Internet Explorer.

2. In Internet Explorer, go to EDIT:PREFERENCES.

3. Locate and select the File Helpers category under Receiving Files in the left pane of the Preferences window. Click on the word "Extension" in the upper right corner to sort the settings by extension name and rapidly type "r, m" to scroll the list to the .rm extentions. Double click the setting labeled "RealMedia File" with .rm in the upper right corner as shown above.

4. Change the popup menu under "Handling" to "Post Process with Application" for How to Handle. Click the Browse button to locate the RealPlayer application on your Mac. Click OK to close the Edit File Helper window.

5. Finally, if you've followed the steps outlined above and still experience problems streaming RealMedia files, you might have no better choice than to download RealPlayer and reinstall the application. This usually resets preferences to default values.