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RealNetworks plans to announce a new version of its software on Monday
that can distribute audio and video in a range of formats, including
Microsoft's own proprietary Windows Media.

The new software is intended for large media companies and other
corporations that need to send audio and video data to customers and
employees in a variety of different formats. But RealNetworks
acknowledged that it was possible that the company might incur
Microsoft's legal wrath.

Nevertheless, Rob Glaser, a former Microsoft executive who founded
RealNetworks as Progressive Networks in 1994, said he believed the
strategy was good for both Microsoft and consumers.

"A rational way for them to respond would be to say, `This is great,' "
he said. "That would be Microsoft of the future."

Mr. Glaser said his company, based in Seattle, had developed a version
of the Microsoft Media Server software that comes with the Windows
operating system.

He said RealNetworks' engineers had studied the data that was sent
between the Microsoft media server software and the Windows Media Player
program and recreated the technology needed to play files in the
Microsoft format. This method created a so-called clean-room version,
meaning the developers built the transmission software without any
knowledge about the underlying program.

Microsoft has adopted a similar strategy at several junctures,
Mr. Glaser said, reverse-engineering technologies like NetWare,
PostScript and JavaScript at different times.

Microsoft executives said the company currently licensed the Windows
Media Player technology to a variety of companies including Yahoo,
RealNetworks and the America Online unit of AOL Time Warner. But a
Microsoft executive said that a clean-room copy of the Windows server
technology could lead to quality and performance issues.

"It's kind of hard to speculate about the technology until we see it,"
said Dave Fester, the general manager of the Windows Media division. If
a company has not licensed the server software, he added, "we would need
to look at it and see what they're doing."

RealNetworks appears to be endeavoring to avoid being "Netscaped," a
reference to the fate that befell the Netscape Communications
Corporation when Microsoft decided to make an Internet browser, which
was pioneered commercially by Netscape, a standard part of the Windows
operating system. Netscape was later acquired by AOL Time
Warner. Microsoft's decision to build an Internet browser into Windows
and give it away at no additional cost led directly to a bitter
antitrust lawsuit brought by the Justice Department in 1997.

RealNetworks, which was a pioneer in the market for streaming media to
desktop personal computers, has been under growing pressure from
Microsoft, which is giving away both the server and Windows Media Player
program as part of its operating strategy. RealNetworks also faces
challenges from Apple Computer, which offers the QuickTime media player
as a part of its Macintosh OS X operating system and sells a more
full-featured player.

Moreover, in recent months Macromedia Inc., which makes the Flash
animation software used on many Web sites, has added video capabilities
to its technology, making it a potential rival.

RealNetworks is gambling that with a proliferation of different
standards and formats for video and audio, the media corporations that
make content available over the Internet will flock to a single system
that supports multiple types of data. The company is trying to shift the
focus of the competition from the PC desktop to the server, according to
analysts.

Several analysts said the RealNetworks shift in strategy could put
Microsoft on the defensive.

"Real has got the experience and sophistication to pull this off," said
Richard Doherty, the president of Envisioneering, a market research and
consulting firm based in Seaford, N.Y. "It will open up a new horse race."

Until now the companies have been engaged in a technology war to rapidly
increase the power and quality of each of their media players. At the
same time, they have competed over which of the programs are placed on
the desktops of personal computer users. RealNetworks claims to have
700,000 subscribers for pay services, but it is perceived as being
increasingly vulnerable, according to some analysts, because Microsoft
has included its Media Player as part of the Windows operating system,
which dominates the PC market.

There are dozens of data formats for playing audio and video on the
Internet, but the dominant ones are RealAudio and RealVideo from
RealNetworks, QuickTime from Apple, Windows Media from Microsoft and the
industry digital movie standards MPEG-2 and MPEG-4.

Microsoft and RealNetworks are currently locked in a close race for
desktop media player leadership. In the first quarter of this year,
according to survey data collected by Jupiter Research, a market
research firm based in New York, RealNetworks' RealOne Player had a 29.1
percent share of media players, while Microsoft's Windows Media Player
had a 28.2 percent share. Apple's Quicktime player was third, with a
12.2 percent.

The new server software from RealNetworks is part of a version of the
company's media server that is to be introduced on Monday and which will
be called the Helix Universal Server. RealNetworks said it would offer
performance data based on a test it financed at an independent testing
service, KeyLabs, that indicate that the Helix software can, under some
conditions, deliver up to four times the speed of the Windows Media
Server in Microsoft's operating system. (Software servers are programs
that run on powerful computers and can send streams of digital
information to many computer users simultaneously.)

At a news conference scheduled to be held in San Francisco, RealNetworks
is also expected to announce that it plans to make the Helix software
available as part of a strategy known as community source, which will
make it possible for RealNetworks partners and competitors to take
advantage of the original programmers' instructions.

RealNetworks is to announce a range of partners, including Hitachi,
Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Deutsche Telekom, NEC, Nokia, Cisco Systems,
Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Palm, Texas Instruments and others. These
partners could then incorporate the software into their own hardware and
software products.