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 My personal favorite is Media Player Classic. Available for Windows (95 through Vista), MPC looks like the old Windows Media Player v6.4, but that's where the similarity ends. Under the hood, this program packs a lot of features, including codecs for viewing DVD discs, MPEG1, MPEG2, and MPEG 4 video files, MP3 and Ogg files. MPC can also use the QuickTime and the RealPlayer architectures (if installed on the computer) to play their native files. If you really want to extend MPC's functionality while avoiding the installation of RealPlayer, WinAmp and Quicktime, download ffdshow, Real Alternative, QuickTime Alternative and WinAmp Alternative packages. They will make sure there will be almost nothing you won't be able to play. MPC is the only product reviewed here that requires no installation on your PC. This means that it can be run from your USB flash drive as well as your hard drive. (Note: there is some dispute over the legality of Real Alternative and QuickTime Alternative codec packs. ffdshow is opensource, completely legal, and should cover almost all of your needs.)
 Many subscribers have asked me to look at The KM Player, and for good reason... This is one exceptional media player. Originally the work of one programmer, the project is now owned by Pandora TV and continues to be developed. This is an impressive program. On a default install, it is configured to play almost any media file available without the need for additional codecs, making it easy to use for those with less experience. Yet if needed, it can be configured to selectively use any codecs you have installed yourself. This means that one can have full control over which codecs and filters The KM Player will use, thus preventing media playback from being messed up. Among its other features, The KM Player can set multifarious audio and video effects, slow down or increase playback speed with regular tone, select parts of a video as favorites, do an exceptionally powerful A-B repeat, remap the keys of remote interface for HTPC including overlay screen controls, and change a skin dynamically depending on the type of media you wish to play. Plus it is completely customizable thanks to a wide selection of skins and color schemes. In short, the configuration options of The KM Player are the most extensive I've ever seen. But keep in mind that many features means a larger program. Weighing in at over 13 MB, THe KM Player is the largest download of the products reviewed here.
My thanks to everyone who suggested The KM Player, especially subscriber Sandeep, whose comments were helpful in creating this review.
 An excellent alternative to MPC is VLC Media Player. VLC is available for multiple OSs, including all versions of Windows (98 through Vista), Mac OS X, and many varieties of Linux. VLC can also be installed and run directly from a flash drive. Most versions will support playback of most video files and DVD discs without the need to download external codec packs, including flv files, which MPC cannot natively play. VLC has another unique feature as well. There are 5 different DVD region codes. DVDs manufactured for one region will not play in players made for a different region. This applies to PC DVD drives as well... until now. VLC plays them all. There is no need for any shady (and possibly illegal DVD region spoofing programs). This is especially nice if you're an international traveler and want to watch a movie on your laptop outside of your country. VLC also has the ability to convert videos to formats it supports and like KM Player, you can specify whether or not to use system codecs. VLS also has the ability to take screenshots of your video, even while during DVD playback, a real attractive feature.
 Another good alternative is GOM Player. Available only for Windows (98Se through Vista), it also will play most media files, including flv files with its own internal codecs. If, however, you come across a file it cannot play, it will direct you to the appropriate open-source codec to install. The program is a little quirky, though. I tried to play a DVD disc on two different PCs using GOM... On one it would not play it at all (and this was a machine I've been able to play DVD discs on before), while on the other PC it played it fine. One very noteworthy feature of the GOM player is its ability to play broken media files. According to subscriber Ash, "GOM Player's claim that it can play broken avi files is very true. We have a file sharing network on campus which uses DC++. Usually avi files which are being downloaded stop partway due to too much traffic. GOM Player was able to play every one of those files on my system up to the point where they stopped downloading."
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How you think, which player best to listen .mp3 files?
Hi,
Here are my recommendations on Best Free Music Players and Organizers:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/best-free-music-players-and-orga...
Who listens to mp3 anymore? Go flac (or ogg if you really need lossy) on foobar.
Why not try mp3 in VBR mode?
What is "VBR mode"?
http://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/terms/vbr.cfm
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm
Another great player. SMPLAYER
http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/
Much better than buggy vlc
VLC is so BUGGY, indeed...
I have been trying for the last 18 months to find
a better All-in-One Media Player,
but I always go back to KMPlayer!
Hi all,
I heard about SMPlayer a few times now. I installed it for some tests and I must say I am disappointed. It can't play DVD menus (loaded several DVD folders from disk) and the movie audio is always too low. No match for VLC in my eyes.
Best regards,
George
Media player classic has support for syncing music if you mean controling audio delay(default hotkey +10ms VK_ADD and -10ms VK_SUBSTRACT)
What "no picture quality controls" mean?
You should also try superior media player classic home cinema
http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/
Best all around player. It's basically media player classic with additionally features and codecs
MEDIA PLAYER CLASSIC HOME CINEMA
What about MPlayer, the hungarian media player with codecs included ?
what video is playing in gom player description???????
The video playing in the screenshot for GOM Player is "Triumph of the Nerds", which was a PBS special about the history of the microcomputer.
whoa.....looks like an old Apple system along with a............Altair 8800 maybe.....no, way too old....nonetheless, looks like some antique systems there!
Edward,
You are correct. On the left is an Apple II system and on the right is an Altair.
hi everyone
just a question/statement, I was looking at jimmy R's website and he raved aboyt vlc having tv watching capabilities, dvd burning and streaming movies. I do not know when his site is updated but, I found that all interesting so downloaded the latest player, but disaster struck, with vista/dell, 2 companies from hell in my opinion and I crashed and burned lost everything i had. So now am having to start from scartch. With no movies to burn, tv shows, lost all my mp3s and all my photos, well which media player should I get? As of now I am pretty bummed out, and exhausted to say the least, I want MINIMAL INSTALLATIONS, of all the freeware I can get to fullfill my needs. Glad I found this site before the crash. So being female I am allowed to cry.
Might be worth trying Portable VLC - shouldn't interfere with your OS at all. Has worked well for me. http://portableapps.com/apps/music_video/vlc_portable
Hi,
it is hard to believe that you get such a major crash by installing and running VLC. I am running VLC on XP, Vista and Mac with no problems. In fact it is my personal favorite.
What exactly was the problem you encountered and how far are you with the cecovery?
Best regards,
George
It might be worth trying something like Recuva to see if your "lost" files can be recovered:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-data-recovery-file-undelete-ut...
I agree with the reviews here.
Media Player Classic: small footprint, and extensible with ffdshow and others.
I found that Real Alternative and QuickTime Alternative do not have good integration with the browsers (unlike their bloated originals), and I personally got fed up of updating individual codec applications just to use them with MPC.
The KMPlayer: Not to be confused with KMPlayer, which seems to be a KDE frontend for MPlayer/ffdshow. The KMPlayer used to be *THE* best all-in-one player, and the unsung hero for audio/video aficionados. The recent album mode just go to show what really neat features TheKMP engine is capable of. But ***BEWARE***: the newer version of The KMPlayer ([2008/10/15] 2.9.3.1433 Delphi2007 release) seems to be spyware (phone-home using remote DNS system function?) after it got taken over by Pandora TV (they seem to have a shitty reputation in their home country). Hope the Pandora idiots realize what a gem they have on their hands, and make it truly worth the downloads.
Foobar, VLC Media Player: Never really did love them, though their fans seem to go ga-ga over them. Good media support and playback quality, but could do with some GUI improvements and better out-of-the-box features, especially when standing against The KMPlayer.
Winamp: Arguably the most favorite media player in the world. Thousands of skins, plugins, etc. But it has become bloated, more demanding on system resources, and without really being able to keep pace (without using third-party plugins) with newer media formats. It no longer deserves the numero uno status.
RealPlayer, Quicktime Player, Windows Media Player, Miro, GOM Player, Quintessential Player, BSPlayer: The also-rans. Pay no heed to them and stick to the above. They are still growing up.
If you people really know a good out-of-the-box media player (or at least a stable one that doesn't depend on K-Lite Codec Packs, and doesn't break every time a codec version is updated by its developers) for audio/video/Internet Radio/IPTV, please let us know.
Understand that The KMPlayer 2.9.3.1433 Delphi2007 release is a BETA release and not yet considered stable. Also, even though it is "phoning home" so to speak, there are many programs that do that as part of the normal function of looking for updates. In this case I would be willing to bet that since the program is still in beta, it is more a functionality of usage statistics and problem reporting.
Regarding MPC and its use with codec packs, I don't think that a codec pack needs to be updated regularly (Unless you are a videophile constantly looking for the best in video quality). Everyday users just don't need to update their codec packs that frequently... perhaps once per year just to make sure they are up on any new codecs that happen to get included in the pack.
Read up on my article, "Understanding Codecs" (Link provided above) and you will see I don't recommend the K-Lite codec pack. There are codec packs out there that do a great job without being illegal while also being stable.
Joe
My choice is AlLPlayer - the reason is simple - I'm layman in terms of finding subtitles and covers for movies.. but ALL does it automatically.. and if sth doesn't play (3GP Mobile), shows me to use LiveUpdate and after downloading right codec.. I could see my Mobile recordings .. The new version shows me covers like apple, well.. :)
I have tried many different players and VLC was ok, the great thing is that it played almost everything. But for some reason when skipping through videos or rewinding it is choppy, not that that is a problem with it, but it did catch me off guard and I prefer when it is smooth. KMP is great, and with time you can do almost anything with it and I have yet to find a media file that won't play on it and thats why it still has a place on my computer. But one that isn't mentioned here is XBMC, I know someone else mentioned it and that is where it was left. Now there are a couple things you need to be aware of before trying it. 1. It requires a pretty hefty computer. I haven't been able to find the requirements other then
*OpenGL
XBMC Media Center software requires that your computer graphcis hardware supports OpenGL 1.4, at a minimum, to function. We do however recommend a ATI/AMD, Intel, or NVIDIA graphic controller that support OpenGL 2.0 or better to fully experience XBMC Media Center at its best. Please also check your graphics device drivers to see what version of OpenGL your GPU (graphics processing unit) harware supports, and update to the latest graphics device drivers if possible. If your platform of choice is Mac OS X and your system has an Intel chipset (Mac Mini, MacBook or a MacBook Air), then even though the graphics device drivers only support OpenGL 1.2, XBMC Media Center will still run smoothly since most of the required functionality in the graphics device drivers is implemented through OpenGL extensions which are support in those graphics device drivers on Mac OS X.
ATI Radeon R420 (X800) or newer supported, ATI Radeon R700 (HD 4000) or newer recommended.
Intel GMA 950 (945G) or newer supported, Intel GMA X4500HD (G45) or newer recommended.
NVIDIA GeForce 6-Series and newer supported, GeForce 8-Series and newer recommended.
But I have an Athlon 64 3700+, 1.5 gigs of RAM, Win XP sp2, Radeon X1950Pro and it seems to run a bit choppy on my comp. But that could also just be in need of updating or something. Anyway, it's a media center, not just a player and so it can do many different types of media, pictures, music, videos, and you can even set it up to tell you the weather in your area. Anyway, if you have the PC to do it I think it is worth checking out.
Duskao
Whats wrong with windows media player11 ?
Comments please
Gordon
Windows media player11 doesn't play all formats..
Out of the box, Windows XP and Vista can play a limited number of media. With the proper codec installed, WMP can play just about any media file out there. See the article "Understanding Codecs" here for more information on that: http://www.techsupportalert.com/understanding-codecs.htm
The reason WMP is not included in this list because of the huge amount of memory and resources it takes to play media while other media players take less resources and pack in more features.
Just an FYI, this category used to be named, "Best Windows Media Player Alternative", but I changed it due to the length of the title.
XBMC is reviewed here:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/xbmc-media-center.htm
Also worth to mention that there is another version: MPlayer-homecinema
which fulfill HD video playback!!
Sorry to say I cannot think of much good to say about KM Player apart from the skin options which are excellent. In terms of audio quality in no way does it even compare to foobar 2000 or VLC and image quality is decidedly poor too, especially if you like to watch stuff downloaded from Youtube. If you only listen to heavy rock you probably won't notice the difference but even so foobar 2000 still has an edge over VLC for audio quality. The skin options for foobar though are poor but use this with Samurize and then the possibilities become endless! By default Samurize recognises foobar for media information (track now playing, time left etc., etc.) and also includes two high quality visuals as standard. You can of course configure even more of your own if you wish. Users of Samurize may also be interested to know (if they don't already) that the more prolific availability of Rainmeter skins will transfer quite happily to your Sam. Configs. Once transferred and "stretched" to size they often look nothing like the original Rainmeter skin so you do need to check each one out to see what the end result looks like. Anyone into a black/grey look for their desktop for instance will be amazed at how the simple 4JL Rainmeter skin looks when applied to Samurize in a larger size. I use a foobar/Samurize combo to play audio and VLC for video and have never been stuck with something which wouldn't play. KM Player still has some way to go before being worthy of any real consideration. I guess Winamp is still an option if you really like it but still not up to VLC performance levels. When I last checked their website VLC Windows development had ceased pending their ability to turn up someone else to carry on the work - don't know what happened to the current guy - probably went cross-eyed writing V9.4 which really is excellent. Linux development is still ongoing but this programme is just too good to stop Windows wise and I'm sure VideoLAN will drag another suitably qualified volunteer up from somewhere soon.
Midnightcowboy
VLC sucks!
Full of bugs.
That's why they release a new version 'every now and then'...
You have a tendency towards crapware!
You undermine KMPlayer (the Best Media Player)
just like you undermined the Best Firewalls (= Comodo and OnlineArmor Free)
to justify you inferior combinations of crazy HIPS +low performance Firewalls.
For users who want a -SINGLE- player, KMPlayer is the Best!
Now, if you want 2-3 players for audio, 1-2 for video, 2-3 for DVD etc. etc.
you can install as many products as you want!
In that case, you may achieve better results than KMPlayer...
With one HUGE difference: Your PC will be overstaffed with unnecessary,
for the average user, software.
So, when you boasting against KMPlayer, you need to compare it with a
-Single- Player; not a bunch of -Different- Players!
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