RealPlayer does not install spyware per se. It is just rather invasive, but I'm pretty sure it doesen't monitor what websites you go to or anything like that unrelated to the RealPlayer pgoram itself. Sounds "muffled" because it's "shareware" -- errm, the free RealPlayer has no playback quality restrictions. Either LearningStrategies encoded it at a poor quality setting or your Internet connection is not downloading from their site quickly enough to get the stream's full quality. Real streams are usually used where low bandwidth consumption is an issue, not where the utmost in quality is important.
-Cameron
