The 30 second buffering will take a little longer to load, but will assure virtually no dropouts. RealPlayer G2 beta will not overwrite or uninstall your RealPlayer 5.0. You can have both versions of the Player concurrently installed on your machine. However, you cannot run both versions of the Player at the same time. Running both versions will cause errors.
Packet loss occurs when information is unable to successfully travel from one server to another.
Previous RealPlayers have interpreted lost information as rebuffering, hissing, crackles, and skips. RealSystem G2 is designed to minimize the effects of packet loss. In RealSystem G2, the RealEncoder creates streams of varying bandwidths. When a RealPlayer G2 connects to a RealServer serving the variable bandwidth content, the server detects the Player's connection speed and sends the best stream possible for that connection. As the Player's connection changes due to packet loss, the RealServer G2 sends lower bandwidth streams.