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What's the best media player?

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Summary: Video playback is a confusing mess. For most people the player to be used is defined not by personal preference, but by the type of file.

What is the best media player to download to view attachments with videos, Real? Quicktime? Windows media?

How about all of the above?

The problem is that as the recipient you don't have a whole lot of choice. It's the sender that determines the format that they send you, and you'll just have to have a player that understands it.

And not all players understand all formats.

Sadly, the world of video in particular is a confusing mess of formats and options. If all you're trying to do is view a video that someone else has provided it's complex enough. Heaven help you if you want to try and produce a video.

For playback, to keep things the simplest:

  • If someone sends you a QuickTime or iTunes video (.mov, .m4p, etc.) then you'll download and use QuickTime (which you'll already have if you have iTunes).

  • If someone sends you a Real media file (.rm, .ra, and more) then you'll download and use Real Player.

  • If someone sends you a Windows Media file (.wma, .wmv, etc.) then you'll download and use Windows Media Player, which you may also already have by virtue of having Windows.

Like I said, that's the simple path. While it results in three different media players on your machine, it usually works.

But recall that I said it's a complicated mess.

What's really happening for most media players is that they don't understand anything at all, in and of themselves. They rely on "codecs" (coder/decoders) that are installed on the system to actually understand the various media formats.

So naturally when you install the Real player, it also installs codecs that understand Real formatted files. Similarly when you install QuickTime, it installs codecs for QuickTime formatted files.

It's even possible that, after installing various media players you may find that some can actually play the formats of another.

"My recommendation for the average user is the simple one: install each player as you need it."

There are some alternatives.

One of the classic alternatives is Media Player Classic. Designed to look like an older version of Windows Media player, you can set it up to play all three. That, of course, is best done by installing the separate applications anyway, after which their codecs become available to Media Player Classic.

But at least you can use a simple and consistent user interface regardless of which format you're viewing.

For codecs there are both Real Alternative and QuickTime Alternative which provide codecs that can add Real media and QuickTime support to other players without having to download the "official" versions of those applications. This is a common way to add Real and Quicktime support to Media Player Classic, for example.

There are two issues with Real and Quicktime Alternatives: typically they're not quite as full featured as the originals and it's not clear whether they're actually legal.

My recommendation for the average user is the simple one: install each player as you need it. (My personal preference is to then immediately disable the start-up programs that each of these programs adds. Those add no value, in my opinion.)

If you'd like a single user interface to handle all formats once the various official players are installed, then download Media Player Classic to act as a front-end.

Related:

Article 11465 | Posted May 6, 2007

Recent Comments
45 Comments

I think KMPlayer is Best media player . It is more powerful then VLC & GOM Player

Posted by: flex at September 14, 2008 4:30 AM

MPlayer or mplayer frontends like SMPlayer 0.5.62 -works on both Windows and Linux ,one of the better media players. Played everything i tried on it. Nice interface, easy to use.also media player classic+ CCCP codec pack is also good.Media Player Classic and GomPlayer were, IMO, at the top. However both had issues handling subtitles in movies, resulting in frame skips occasionally. SMPlayer has not had this problem .

Posted by: kash at September 14, 2008 5:01 PM

as we have many media player are being used now a days....like real player,flashplayer,windows media player,so on......
could u please give me an idea which one better in respect to develop a websites and to use any of the mediaplayer and not letting to download the videos are being played .

Posted by: navneet kumar sharma at September 19, 2008 4:08 AM

I think thatthe best player is "Dziobas RAR Player". it plays every kind of file (audio and video).
If you have a video compressed file like RAR file you don't have to extract it, just open it with "Dziobas RAR Player" and it will play the video. And you can ajust the aspect ratio so you can anjoy watching full screen video.For me it is THE Best Player ever.
Play dvd, mvk, avi, mpge, ogg, rar(forward), password rar (no forward)
Play all files without codecs. Play rar files without extracting.
Play AVI, MPGE, RMVB, OGG, MP3, RAR, MKV, MKA and some not popular
formats.
Subtitles support
Automatic download subtitles form opensubtitles.org using hash.
Image grabber function(generate thumnails)
More filters.


Posted by: Kadric at September 24, 2008 6:24 PM

zoom layer is the best

Posted by: noone at October 12, 2008 7:07 PM

i think "Dziobas RAR" Player caught my eyes, its works like magic. =) hahah i use Media Player classic before.. and thanks to this =) i found Dziobas RAR Player

Posted by: Kevin at October 27, 2008 3:43 AM

Yes, but at least today, the free link is "broken", while it says the "pay" links are working...

Posted by: Fritz at October 28, 2008 10:57 AM

strange none of you mentioned the jet audio player at all. Mostly VLC or real or quicktime. I have used jet audio since its inception some years back and i found it to be the best player out there bar none. It has plug ins for quicktime winamp real and windows. It also has file associations for all players that i mentioned. Including matroska which seems to be the best codec going for players to use. If anyone has not seen this player go to Cowan america and get it for free. You get the basic but not all the features, like burning and such but....for what it makes up for is real excellent viewing movies or listening to songs of your favorite flavor. Most pro players will always need money for the extras, but who cares?. Ill stick with jet audio, as for VLC its fine to a point, the only thing jet cannot play is BIN or CUE files thats what vlc is for. Not even windows or real comes close to jet in any way. And it does NOT hog resource power thats what real and windows players do. So go get jet audio, you will not be disappointed.

Posted by: chris at October 29, 2008 5:47 AM

km media player sucks, wont play my xvid codec avi files.. all i get is a green screen

Posted by: Mike C at November 11, 2008 10:22 PM

I love MediaMonkey for my audio. It's intended to be used with large collections like mine which is around 35GB with over 100 discographies. For Vids I use VLC but I hate the fact it doesn't save your place.

Posted by: J E at November 29, 2008 3:01 PM

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