Users can also plug into RealPlayer’s legacy features, including the ability to download YouTube videos and upload them to the Cloud for later private or offline viewing.

If you recommend a friend and they sign up, both you and your friend get another free gigabyte of storage,” explained Glaser. “We’ve taken a page out of Dropbox’s playbook, starting with 2GB of free storage for everyone. RealPlayer Cloud allows easy sharing of unlimited length video both privately between friends and family or publicly via Twitter or Facebook. Links to the videos can be sent directly from the smartphone apps via text message or any other communication service the smartphone, tablet or computer has access to including Twitter and Facebook. Videos can also be played or uploaded through the RealPlayer Cloud site, removing the need for a dedicated app and making it easier to send video to non-RealPlayer users.

Glaser said that his aim is to have RealPlayer Cloud available on every device out there, including smart TVs, for “frustration free viewing no matter what device you have.” The service is accessible through apps for the iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire and Windows, plus via Google’s Chromecast or the Roku media streaming box connected to a TV. Localised versions in English, French, German and Spanish, with Italian, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese will follow soon. RealPlayer Cloud was launched in North America five months ago, gaining 500,000 users already, but is now launching globally at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

‘Frustration-free viewing no matter what device’ The founder and interim chief executive of RealNetworks returned to the company a year and half ago to reinvent the business. “Hit the button and it just works – we do all the transcoding, transmuxing, balancing of bitrate and bandwidth for you in the background, so whatever device you're viewing the content on the video just magically works,” Rob Glaser told the Guardian.

Can realplayer download youtube videos