Media player classic w/ Real alternative to different sound card

[jlz901]

I have a HTPC that I need to play a Real media streaming internet feed on the video card's secondary output to the TV. It is also equipped with a PCI sound card for this task. I want to use this card to play back this program's audio and use my motherboard audio for everything else.

By chosing the sound card in Media Player Classic preferences, I can play back most audio and video. Unfortunately, Real Alternative, which handles the Real video stream, only plays to the system default sound device even when I specify 'Direct Sound' in its configuration and choose the apropriate DirectSound device in Media Player Classic.

Also, the official Real Player Gold 10.5 crashes when I go to choose Devices in it's Preference menu. This is probably attributeable to incompatibility with Windows Vista.

Any ideas short of getting a dedicated system to play this internet stream?

[jlz901]

Okay, how about this...

Are there any real alternatives to Real Alternative?

[celtic_druid]

Use mplayer with "-ao dsound:device=2"

[jlz901]

Ahh... "mplayer" not "mplayerc."

After figuring out how to set it up, it works wonderfully. The video quality is not quite as good as Real Alternative, but it is very very smooth. Thank you!

[celtic_druid]

Same decoder as used by Real Alt. Guess it wouldn't use High-Frequency Enhancement or anything like that though. mplayer has its own post processing though.