They stripped down their core player, rewrote the rendering and streaming logic in Java, and released — usually packaged as a lightweight .jar file embedded directly into a web page.
Java promised to fix that. Sun Microsystems had spent years selling the world on "Write Once, Run Anywhere." Java applets could run inside any browser with a Java Virtual Machine (JVM), without native code, without admin rights.
RealNetworks saw an opportunity.
So here's to RealPlayer for Java. Forgotten. Flawed. But ahead of its time. Did you ever use RealPlayer for Java back in the day? Or do you have a vintage streaming horror story? Let me know in the comments.