RealPlayer SP beta now out for Mac

On Monday, RealNetworks released a beta of RealPlayer SP for the Mac, the latest version of the company's free multimedia playback software.

The previous Mac version, RealPlayer 11, added the ability to download many web videos (such as those from YouTube) to your computer using a companion downloader app.

RealPlayer SP builds off that capability by now letting you convert those videos to to play on the iPod, the iPhone, and the Apple TV, as well as many other smartphones and media players.

The RealPlayer Converter includes presets for a slew of devices, so you don't need to the know the video format or frame size requirements for your particular device. When converting for Apple hardware, the app automatically adds the files to iTunes after it's done, so you can transfer them or simply watch them in iTunes.

The other aspect of RealPlayer SP is social interaction, highlighted by buttons to share video links via Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.

Real released a beta version of RealPlayer SP for Windows users in 2009, and says users have downloaded more than 100 million videos from the web since its launch.