Now, we have a lot of options to play media on Windows-based PCs if we want to overlook Microsoft's bundled Windows Media Player (WMP). The Windows Media Centre is a paid alternative from Microsoft's own stable.
Another trustworthy choice is Apple's iTunes. But even the latest version appears to be 'heavy'. The company's QuickTime player is also a good option. In this article we will look at some of the other free options available.
1. VLC player
There is not introduction needed for VLC Player. It had been around for some time in the market. It is “a cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols”.
The VideoLan project was originally started as an academic project in 1996 and was known as VideoLan Client. We can create bookmarks and playlists and supports 1080p video playback. It even tries to repair damaged video files. The player is yet to support Blue-ray format.
As long as possible we should download it from http://www.videolan.org site, as other sites which offer the player may let us download adware and spyware.
2. GOM Player
The GOM Player (Gretech Online Movie Player) is among the very good video players to come out from Korea. Like the VLC, it also repairs broken media files. It has native support for playing most popular video formats and it finds missing codecs using a codec finder service if it is not supported.
The site says "aside from being the most widely used video player in South Korea, the non-Korean versions of GOM Media Player enjoy a monthly worldwide user base of over 43 million in over 200 countries, making it one of the world’s most popular video players".
3. KMPlayer
The Korean Media Player (KMP or KMPlayer) has been another one of the favourite media players for several years. It was initially launched on October 01, 2002 but acquired by Pandora TV in 2007.
It captured the imagination of the users as a 'light' player as opposed to the 'heavy' players which need more hardware support. Like all good players it also has plenty of audio and video settings which allow us to tweak to get the best out of the file we are playing.
4. Media Player Classic Home Cinema
The Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) is the successor of one of the best-loved media players of all time-- Media Player Classic. This may be best player if the PC is a bit old. Its promoters say we can “watch movies on any SSE CPU, even on your old computer back from '99.”
However, the player does not support the Windows Metro or Windows RT. The official site says “supporting these new platforms require a lot of changes and this is simply not possible for us in the near future, with the current manpower.”
5. PotPlayer
We now come to the fifth and arguably the best player available today—the PotPlayer. The CNET reviewer gives it a five out of five rating. Interestingly, it also comes from Korea and was produced by Daum, the web portal which introduced the KMPlayer.
It has all the usual features we expect from a player of its nature. The player has built in codecs which help us play a variety of media files. It offers top class video playback too. It also has advanced video processing settings too.
Certainly these are not the only good media players available. There are several of them including SMPlayer, RealPlayer and UM Player. Most of these players also support live streaming too.
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