Open Source Media Player Alternatives
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This live call involved a gentleman asking me for a good free alternative to Windows Media Player. He’s had a lot of trouble using WMP, and doesn’t really like it.
The chat room immediately went nuts on this request, yelling (typing, of course) out names of various media players. Everyone has their favorites, it seems. My first suggestion is VLC, and the other one is MPlayer. Both of them are free, and work very well. In fact, the new Google Video player is based on VLC.
MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems. It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies.
VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
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32 Comments
Great Programs and links
February 20th, 2008
at 12:08pm
media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as aserverto stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems. It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4,
Windows Vista Torrent
February 19th, 2008
at 6:58pm
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TubeCaan
February 18th, 2008
at 8:46pm
First :D
SebastianK94
February 18th, 2008
at 8:51pm
No now I am first! WAHAHAHAHAHAHA
lonewolfpwnage
February 18th, 2008
at 8:52pm
foobar2000 and CCCP + MPC
sage
vlc sucks, as does iTunes
gnfnr211
February 18th, 2008
at 8:59pm
iTunes
razvanab29
February 18th, 2008
at 9:22pm
foobar 0.9.5 for media library
media player classic for quick lisening
ssolkemserB
February 18th, 2008
at 9:30pm
iTunes dosn’t play videofiles? Not that i have seen at least…
ltsAboutJesus
February 18th, 2008
at 11:17pm
open source…hmmn vlc media player id say..stick with the orange cone
therealorberon
February 18th, 2008
at 11:48pm
I used Klite codec and watch everything in windows media classic.
jugglerkieran
February 19th, 2008
at 12:01am
VLC
MPCstar-(this is the opposite fo windows media player. ie it plays pretty much everything)
predragbabic82
February 19th, 2008
at 1:40am
gom player is far better than vlc
ohGirltFeelsGood
February 19th, 2008
at 2:04am
wrong me first
joshcj2006
February 19th, 2008
at 2:17am
actually you were last XD
an80sGuy
February 19th, 2008
at 4:19am
Me thinks that Chris has never actually tried Flip4Mac. Logos on the screen? Yeah right. Actually its 100% invisible. Plays the wmv seamlessly in Quicktime Player or browser window.
gnfnr211
February 19th, 2008
at 5:06am
Yes it does trust me I use it all the time!
vahnx1337
February 19th, 2008
at 6:33am
Never tried it, but VLC is more popular and very small.
webboy9579
February 19th, 2008
at 7:40am
Odd question, how do you change file type associations in osx, I have vlc but my files still want to open in quicktime?”???
Brian Layman
February 19th, 2008
at 7:11am
I prefer the DivX player for its keyboard controls and the fact that it has avoided stuttering on just about all encoding methods.
randy_nacol2022
February 19th, 2008
at 7:20am
With all the problems that Windows Media Player has why have we been so addicted to Microsoft. I tunes is the same way when it comes to players. It’s like these are the two major brands yet how many really enjoy the experience .Thanks for showing me VLC Player. I’ll try it
salivate
February 19th, 2008
at 12:05pm
You can use QuickTime to playback just about anything if you install Perian (http://perian.org/) and Flip4mac (http://www.flip4mac.com/), both are free.
JeankGeek
February 19th, 2008
at 3:38pm
GOM player is also a good player, i recommended, for me is the best!, even can play nokia cel video!!
Lovs2look
February 19th, 2008
at 4:03pm
K-Lite Codec Pack.
Contains all the codecs you will EVER need (for most users anyway) and the very neat and tidy Windows Media Player 6 updated to play DVDs, VOBs and many many other types of video. I haven’t found ANY file that I can’t play yet.
My favourite all-in-one package!
wizkid6000
February 20th, 2008
at 1:47am
VLC is the best by far, no fucking shitty codexs and all that bollox, stick with the orange cone you’ll never go back.
Generalvaldez
February 20th, 2008
at 6:25am
Win Amp and Song Bird are great alternatives
blood08xbx
February 20th, 2008
at 8:57am
Miro is the best ever… plays everything
Blackmailman
February 20th, 2008
at 1:26pm
txt butthole at 2:25
RawlegendGuru
February 21st, 2008
at 8:52am
VLC PWNS all
v1p3rm4g3
February 21st, 2008
at 10:53pm
VLC is good except for certain RealMedia file types.
desertwarrior
February 22nd, 2008
at 5:19pm
For me I don’t trust windows media player. For years I’ve been using Cowon Jet Audio It’s a free media player that handles almost every file type and file types with the correct codec installed on your computer. You can configure the hot keys anyway you want and their is cool visualizations when music plays you can configure. I recently got the upgrade to be able to convert all my vids to mp4 using jet audio and I say it is really fast on converting.
stevensmith288
February 23rd, 2008
at 3:21am
what do you think of kantaris media player ? I found it just surfing the web one night and now I wouldn`t be without it!!!
bussypass
March 27th, 2008
at 10:09pm
KMP IS THE BEST
better than wmp, vlc, mplayer, and all others…that i know of
search kmp on freewarefiles. com