Real's new way to download videos
RealNetworks unveils a beta version of its Real Player that allows downloading video straight to a hard drive.

New technology for downloading video will give users new capabilities -- and raise new security concerns.

The new software, from RealNetworks, will let consumers download videos in the Flash, Windows Media, Quicktime and RealMedia formats.

The beta version will be available at the end of June.

The new technology will not let users download videos where their creators use DRM protections.

Sasha Salama reports.

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Downloading videos from your favorite websites is now just a click away.

Real networks, the digital entertainment company is out with a beta version of RealPlayer technology that lets you download videos from the internet straight to you hard drive. And that means you can watch your favorite clips from the video-sharing site YouTube, for example, whenever you want, wherever you want, Lance Ulanoff is editor of reviews with PC Magazine.

So you could really if you want it to set up and go through like 15 pages download 15 videos and then on your train right home watch all of them. They're now resident on your hard disk, on your PC. And that is something no one, no commercial enterprise has really done before.

Big media companies already are skittish about what shows up on YouTube, because some of the content is copy-righted. YouTube says it's working hard to develop technology that would block copy-righted material from the site. And Real Networks has set up its technology, so you can not take content you've downloaded and put it up on another site.

Real Networks did not allow anyone to re-encode the contents, because they don't want to be sued by content providers, and they also don't want YouTube to come after them because if someone says that Real Networks is enabling people to download stuff off YouTube, YouTube is going to have a problem and Real Networks is going to have a problem.

But when you talking about the Internet, information is never 100% secure.

Nothing is unhackable. Nothing, they've hacked DVDs, they've hacked high-def DVDs and if these files are resident on your hard drive which they are, people will find a way to re-encode them and put them wherever they want.

Despite the security risks, some analysts say media companies may automatically embrace the new Real Networks' technology as a way to bring in new viewers and new potential revenue streams.

Sasha Salama, Reuters, New York.

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