After I wondered what the current state of the HelixPlayer/RealPlayer development is I asked the developers. The answer was that there is still no date given, but that I could help them by testing the players in my setup. And since that isn’t difficult at all I downloaded the rpms and gave them a try.

The Tests

RealPlayer:
- start: worked, although the release information were outdated (German
translation)
- configuration: ALSA is default playback
- ogg music file: worked fine
- mp3 music file (with German umlaut ‘ö’ in file name): worked fine
- ogg video file: colours are wrong: black turned to green, etc.; when I
deactivated the XVideo option in the configuration everything worked fine
- realplayer stream: same as above, colours are wrong: blue turns to yellow,
etc., everything was fine after deactivating XVideo
...

Full Story.