RealNetworks announced on Thursday the availability of RealPlayer 11 Beta for Mac OS X, Tiger and Leopard, in concert with the general release of RealPlayer and RealPlayer Plus for PCs. Because there are four product options, TMO spoke with Ryan Luckin at RealNetworks to sort it out.

1. RealPlayer for PCs allows the user to view video content. If not DRMid, it can be saved to disk. If it is, then only streaming is allowed. Downloads in Flash, Windows Media, QuickTime and Real are supported. This version is free for PCs.

2. RealPlayer Plus is priced at US$39.95, available now, and adds DVD burning and downloading of non-DRMid content to iPod nano, iPod video, and iPod classic. Support for the iPod touch and iPhone will come in early 2008.

3. On the Mac side, the RealPlayer 11 is in Beta and is supported in Tiger and Leopard in Safari and Firefox. It is a basic viewer and has the same DRM restrictions as the PC side. The final version is expected in early 2008, according to Ryan Luckin at RealNetworks. Only Flash video and QuickTime are supported at this time.

4. Finally in early 2008, RealNetworks will add the ability of the Mac version to download to the standard video iPods, nano, video, classic, but will not have the DVD burner like its PC counterpart. Once again, support for the iPod touch and iPhone will be phased in later. The pricing of the full featured Mac version of RealPlayer remains TBD.