In an extension of the intellectual property agreement, he two companies have also agreed to support the principles of the "Ask, Tell, Help" initiative. This strategy promotes good 'Internet manners' by ensuring that each company's player applications will inform and ask the user before changing the user's default player selection for common media formats.

RealNetworks also announced that its RealServer 8 now supports the delivery of Apple's QuickTime-based content to Apple's QuickTime players and is immediately available for download here.

RealServer 8 supports the widest array of media types, including support for QuickTime to QuickTime players. RealServer 8 Preview is available for free. General release of RealServer 8 is expected in the second half of the year.

"Apple's open-source QuickTime Streaming Server has already been licensed by IBM, Sun, SGI, Akamai and many others, helping to provide great content to the more than 50 million QuickTime players that have been distributed worldwide," said Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive officer.

"RealServer 8's support for Apple's QuickTime now provides content creators and infrastructure providers a unified way to deliver the widest array of content to the largest possible audience," said Rob Glaser, chairman and CEO of RealNetworks. "We're delighted to be collaborating with Apple on this exciting effort."