There was a time when video files all conformed to some basic requirements and could be played without protest using any media software. As technologies change and licensing becomes more restrictive and specific, simply playing a video file has now become a challenge and thanks to the plethora of obscure proprietary formats now available, finding a media player that works for the majority has become more hassle than it’s worth. Thankfully the open source community have come up with a solution in the form of VLC, otherwise know as VideoLAN Client.

This cross platform player doesn't strike as particularly good-looking when put side by side with Windows Media Player or Winamp, but you'll appreciate its far superior usability within moments. Its power can be demonstrated with any video files you happen to be downloading, which can be played in whatever form they exist, be it an actual video format or an unclassified temporary one. As you preview a video, it will skip the parts that have yet to be downloaded and let you see the rest – Media Player in comparison, can't preview files in this way.

Apart from playing incomplete videos, because lets face it not many people want to do that anyway, VLC has support for a huge range of video formats. If it doesn't recognize the file type it will try playing it anyway often successfully or if it's an encrypted file it will display the scrambled video in its raw form. The interface is stripped down to the bare bones, with the apparent objective of making it as unobtrusive as possible. With superb hotkey support, you can do practically everything you want without touching your mouse.

Put simply, VLC is a video player that doesn't stray in to other areas. There is only one alternative skin available, but all it will take is one look and you'll quickly be switching back to the default.

This free player should appeal to true cinephiles who want as little distraction as possible from their viewing experience. Being open source it's free to use and thanks to a small file size and a friendly installation process, we would recommend it to absolutely everyone as their "backup" or "catch-all" video player.

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There are literally dozens of options out there for FLV playback and FLVPLayer4Free tries to weigh in as one of the more customisable FLV players. Normally, FLV players are rather rudimentary affairs since Flash is not a particularly easy format to work with. However FLVPlayer4Free has tried to add some glitz to the Flash reproduction genre. Amongst many things, you can drag & drop FLV files straight into FLV player and save frames of your favourite films as images although only in three formats - JPG, PNG and BMP. You can instruct it to play in full screen mode and to stop anything else getting in the way of your viewing experience, keep the screen always in the foreground. There are a few limited volume settings including a mute option and you can also put FLV films or videos on a loop if you want. One very simple thing that I find many FLV players ignore is an elapsed time feature which is one thing that is included in FLVPlayer4Free. You can also play as many FLV files as you want at the same time although why anyone would want to do this, I'm not sure since you only have one soundcard to put it all through.

Overall, FLVPlayer4Free is one of the more comprehensive FLV Players on the market although I'm still awaiting the day when FLV players get really serious.

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As far as open source multimedia entertainment centers go, Elisa is a very impressive effort although it requires a lot of processing power and RAM.

Elisa has an intuitive interface that gives a professional feel and can be used to view both TV streams and most major video formats. You can even access it remotely from another computer if need be. Elisa also makes a pretty good audio player and displays album covers and other band related images as it plays your music in the same way as iTunes does.

Indeed, some of the inspiration for it appears to have come from iTunes although unlike iTunes, it extends itself to photo viewing and even browsing the Internet. The latter two functions are not the strongest areas of the package, although the browser is mainly designed for watching videos.

If you've got plenty of RAM to spare and fancy doing all your multimedia functions under one umbrella, Elisa is a beautifully presented and free open source solution.

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Watch your favorite DVDs on your home theater system, desktop or laptop PC, and enjoy crystal-clear pictures with top audio performance. With broad format support, state-of-the-art enhancement technologies and unique features for watching movies on the go, WinDVD offers the best entertainment experience.

• Enjoy standard DVDs at HD-quality with theater-like surround sound
• Watch movies wherever you are with battery optimization and TimeStretch playback
• Play movies in the most popular audio and video formats
• Instantly hide navigation controls for a clean, sleek look

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Choosing a multimedia player used to be a real no-brainer. However, during recent times the raft of new features and updates added to classic media players like Winamp, Windows Media Player, and even iTunes have left the apps increasingly bloated. Far from being the slick, well-oiled machines they once were, these programs have been stuffed with so much that they are in danger of ending up like a sluggish, overweight athlete still holding on to past glories.

For those looking for a fresh alternative to these ballooning apps, The KM Player could be your ticket. The application has a small desktop footprint and its minimalist interface, somewhat akin to the original Winamp 5, means that access and playback are quick and hassle-free. Like Winamp, the interface is fully skinable, and there are some nice aesthetic touches, such as the changing of colour on the player with every new track. There are all sorts of options to help you pimp your player, such as visualizations, plug-ins and playback options, but the beauty of KM Player is that these are turned on at your request rather than being forced upon you at the outset.

The application handles both audio and video, and supports a wide range of different formats, meaning that once installed, you should never need to touch another player. Video playback is particularly impressive thanks to the range of processing tools available that allow you to sharpen, change picture properties, apply filters and even make video captures from within the program.

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Far from being just office workhorses, computers are also thought of as complete entertainment systems that you can use to chat with friends, play videogames or watch movies. Regarding this last option, there's a wide range of DVD players out there, but we'll focus our attention on one of them: Power DVD.

The program's installation process is very quick. It includes Google Toolbar as an add-on but you can decline its installation if you're not interested. Once launched, you gain access to its main interface which, to be honest, is not especially nice: a close-up of a girl wearing weird sunglasses is not the kind of thing you expect to see on the screen when opening a DVD player. It would look much better with some abstract design or just the program logo instead. Anyway, configuration settings allow you to customize this interface with skins but there are no skins included. At least you can change the color scheme by clicking on the display.

Power DVD is generally very easy to use. All the buttons on the player panel have tooltips to give you hints about their usage. Also, most of their functions can be performed with the mouse or the keyboard (using the hotkey displayed in the tooltip). When playing a movie in full screen mode, the panel hides automatically and shows only if you move the mouse. Still, you can access all the program's functions through a comprehensive context menu by right-clicking anywhere on the image.

As for the playing functions, the movie flows very smoothly even when you move the window around or play it in full screen mode. Sound can be configured in different ways, depending on your hardware means (from headphones to an 8-speaker surround system) in order to obtain the best possible sound quality. During our tests, we also found some interesting tools: one offers the possibility to change playing speed and therefore obtain slow or fast motion images; another one lets you take snapshots of your favourite scenes in the movie, according to the settings in Configuration – Player – Advanced - Snapshot; and finally a tool called "Say it again" with which you can repeat certain dialogues over and over again. This may be useful for foreign language students or movie fans who like to learn certain script lines by heart.

Power DVD is then a perfect solution for your all DVD playing needs. It may seem quite simple at first sight but after all, you don't need much more apart from "play" and "pause" to happily watch a movie on your PC. And in case you want to know more about the program and their developers, have a look at our interview with Dr. Jau Huang, Cyberlink's founder.

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Sometimes I prefer watching movies and TV series on the computer rather than doing it on the couch. The image quality in my PC monitor is better and I can handle more formats than just DVD.

Of course, I need a good video player in order to enjoy my favorite movies at their most, and my choice is no other than BSPlayer. This great video player features anything you need to watch movies or any other kind of video on your PC. It supports all popular video formats (and audio as well, in case you were wondering) and though its basic interface is not really the nicest one I've seen, you can easily customize it with skins.

BSPlayer supports video subtitles, takes screenshots of movie currently playing, lets you create bookmarks and chapters to move along videos more easily and has also support for plug-ins. I especially liked the way you can control playback, either by using keyboard shortcuts or simply your mouse: one click to stop the video, two clicks to go full screen, mouse wheel to raise or low the volume…

The only thing I didn't like was the fact that, being a free version, you're obliged to install an adware element on your PC that displays ads from time to time while you're browsing the way. It's a safe app that doesn't compromise your privacy, but still it's not my cup of tea. I guess it's just the price you have to pay for having such a great video player for free.

BSPlayer lets you enjoy your favorite movies on the PC with a wide range of features (subtitles, screenshots, bookmarks and more) provided you're willing to accept some ads on your desktop.

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The ALShow codecs included movie player lets your watch all your videos, movies, and DVDs without searching for video codecs or audio codecs. From AVI to XviD, playing movies is first-click easy with codecs for all popular video, audio, and movie formats. ALShow also recognizes codecs that you do not have and automatically helps instantly install the right codecs. ALShow loads movies fast and plays movies smoothly.

No more video playback stuttering. Audio, video, and screen captures let you save portions of movies to share with friends. You can also import them to your favorite audio or video editor. Video looping lets you repeat parts of a movie. Captions and subtitles are supported for monitor and TV output. The ESC key hides ALShow when you are supposed to do homework. Click the tray icon to resume playing your DVD movie or video.

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Listen to music, watch videos, tune in to radio, burn CDs and more from one convenient player! AMP is an application that works outside of the AOL client, and can be used to play audio and video content on your computer when you are not connected to the Internet.

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Don’t be put off by the name: 'sub' doesn't stand for an inferior program, but actually a very useful one (the 'sub' stands for sub-titles). The idea is simple but great: to watch films on your computer with subtitles in the language of your choice. The program is easy to use but there is still room for improvement.

The good thing about having this software is that you will not have to pass through the frustrating process of looking for subtitles on the Internet and find a reader which combines them with your film. With this application all you have to do is to upload the film you want to see. If you are lucky, the program will automatically recognise its name and will show you the subtitles available. If not, you can simply type the title in the appropriate field and press the search button.

We have tried with the English IMDB.com top ten list of the 90s and found subtitles for each entry in the list. Unfortunately, for non-English films the selection is limited to only popular classics.

On the whole, Sublight is really useful both for film-lovers and for foreign language students. We just hope the database of subtitles will increase, particularly for foreign films as it makes more sense for an English-speaking audience to watch foreign-language films with English or original subtitles.

A very useful application as long as the list of non-English films increases.

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If you're looking for a powerful high-quality video converter, player, editor for MPEG, QuickTime, and iPod clips then MPEG Streamclip may fit the bill.

Not only that, MPEG Streamclip now edits DivX and can even download the latest DivX releases from the DivX corporation. It's clear that MPEG Streamclip is a multi-faceted utility that can be used to do a variety of things from playing most movie formats and then performing simple editing in terms of Cut, Copy, Paste, and Trimming clips (which isn't much but enough for most of us).

Because the editing feature is so limited however, it may make more sense to import the semi-edited files you have and then import them into a DVD authoring application to burn them to disk or another editing program such as Windows Movie Maker.

MPEG Streamclip is an all in one solution to convert MPEG video to multiple formats, from AVI or QuickTime DV up through MPEG-4 and perform basic editing on them.

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Portable VLC media player is the popular VLC media player packaged as a portable app, so you can take your audio and video files along with everything you need to play them on the go. It reads all types of formats like MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, XviD, WMV, DVDs, VCDs and streaming.

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Any FLV Player is a standalone freeware to play FLV (MPEG-4 encoded video file for Flash) files. With Any FLV Player, you can easily play your FLV videos as it doesn't require the complicated Flash authoring tool and Flash development tools. Compared with other FLV players, this FLV player tool can help you post video files to website or BLOG with clicks. You can use the Publish to Web feature to easily integrate any videos to your website. In addition, the FLV meta information injection feature easily enables you to add the FLV meta data to FLV video files.

Fully customized play control panel

If you want to play any video clips on your own website or blog, you need a FLV player Flash object, or a SWF FLV player. At the same time, you need the SWF FLV player to match your website color scheme. Any FLV player is so cool because you can adjust the color of each part to match your website. You can select your own color for the control panel, play/pause button, time display, play position slide etc. You can decide to put the control bar on the top or bottom of the video.

Publish your FLV video to website with a few clicks

It requires some coding work while you want to integrate video playback on your website. you need to know some basic knowledge about FLASH or XML etc. However, with Any FLV Player, you can playback video on your website with a few mouse clicks. Don't need any coding skills.

Automatically inject FLV video meta information

The Macromedia Flash 8 FLV Playback component functions best when your .flv contains valid metadata,however, some FLV encoder doesn't output the metadata. With Any FLV Player, the FLV metadata will be automatically injected to your FLV video file, including playback duration, audio, video information etc. So the visitor of your website will get better playback effect with the metaData injected video file.

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Playing Flash files is increasingly important because of the proliferation of sites such as YouTube and DailyMotion.

Flash Movie Player is absolutely free and as the developers say, has no nag screens, no ads, no spyware and no time limit. It gives you much greater control over Flash movies than most players, allowing you to rewind swf movies, animations and Flash games to any position in playing or paused mode. The program can extract Flash movies from EXE projector files and save them in SWF format plus it even allows you to compile playlists, sorting functions and has a full screen mode with an auto-hiding navigation bar which conveniently disappears when the movie is in full flow. In addition, you can create snapshots easily although your saving formats are limited to JPEG or BMP format. The program allows you to explore cached SWF files which means you can add SWF files from IE, Firefox and Opera's cache to your playlist. In addition, the program can even trigger a Flash Movie as your screen saver from a random selection of clips.

A great Flash player that gives you 100% full control over your playlists and file playing options.

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One of the most frustrating things about video playback is when you don't have the right codecs installed.

SMPlayer attempts to do away with this problem completely by attempting to play videos regardless of the codecs they need. It does this by using the MPlayer engine which the developers claim can play almost all video formats. In reality, this is not always the case. What you may find is that if you're trying to play a WMV file protected by DRM for example, you will see snippets of the film but not the whole thing. However, the player has many other great features that make it an interesting proposition. One of the most useful is the way it remembers most of the settings of files that you play a bit like a DVD Player. If you turn off a film because you're a bit tired, when you open it later, it will start from exactly the same point where you left it with all the original settings including subtitles and audio. One other area where the player excels is in subtitling. SMPlayer allows you to choose subtitles in a variety of formats allowing you to choose the font, size, and even colors.

There are many other great aspects to SMPlayer - audio track switching, mouse scrolling and multiple speed playback - that on top of it's codec free playback, make it an excellent choice.

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There are so many formats out there now that it's hard to find a player that can cater for them all but deliver outstanding quality and playback.

However, one program that surely does is Nero ShowTime which plays just about anything in stunning quality. The program comes with a play control panel that allows you to quick launch into the type of function that you need. So if you need a player or a frame capture tool for your favourite movies, this is your starting point. If it's frames that you want to capture, Nero Showtime can save individual frames in very high quality and saves them in BMP format which is a bit big but it's the only format on offer. This does mean that when you select it as your wallpaper, it can slow down your startup a little but it's probably worth it for the stunning display.

The program comes with a ton of video enhancement features which are mainly responsible for offering the very high quality images but with DivX files, changing the settings can lead to some rendering problems - i.e. playback can become jerky or stuttered.

Nero Showtime is a very powerful DVD player and it plays just about anything. The quality can be superb although you may be less than impressed by its handling of DivX.

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In an age of multiple media players all with different codecs and formats, it's nice to know there's at least one out there that can play just about anything.

Haihaisoft Universal Player supports almost all popular digital media formats and can also play digital media files protected by DRM-X. Amongst the players it can emulate are Windows Media Player, Real Player, Adobe Flash Player, Apple QuickTime Player, PowerDVD and Flash Video (FLV) Player. Whatsmore though, this player embeds itself into Internet Explorer meaning that whenever you are presented with a format compatible with any of these file types, you can watch it instantly. The number of formats it can play is mind-boggling, including those protected by DRM such as WMV(Windows Media Video), WMA(Windows Media Audio), ASF, WMS, DVD, VCD, SVCD, MOV, RM, RMVB, AVI, MPEG, WMV, 3GP, FLV, SWF, MP3, AMR, M4A, ACC, OGG, MIDI, GIF and JPEG file format. Best of all, the program is constantly updated with the latest codecs so you don't need to worry about it suddenly not being able to play files.

A completely free player that supports just about any format imaginable and embeds itself into IE perfectly.

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The new QuickTime 7 Player not only delivers startling quality, but it's easier to use than ever. It requires no set up for content that streams over the network. Instead, QuickTime 7 Player automatically determines your system's connection speed and chooses the highest quality stream for the amount of bandwidth you have available. And if you ever lose a connection while watching streaming video, QuickTime 7 Player automatically reconnects. Now, that's convenience.

Do you think great video deserves great audio? We do, too. And QuickTime 7 Player delivers truly outstanding multi-channel audio. In fact, it provides you with up to 24 channels of audio, turning your home office into a home theater. Pop in a movie or video game that features surround sound and prepare to be amazed at the heightened audio experience you'll enjoy on your computer equipped with surround-sound speakers. A really good sport, QuickTime 7 Player supports a wide-range of industry-standard audio formats, including AIFF, WAV, MOV, MP4 (AAC only) and AAC/ADTS.

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Sothink FLV Player is a small-sized and easy-to-use FLV Player that allows you to enjoy videos downloaded in Flash format from sites such as YouTube and DailyMotion.

Simply double-click on FLV files or drag and drop them into the window of FLV Player and you can enjoy flash videos offline at any time. The image quality is generally excellent compared to some FLV players although obviously much depends on what state it was in when you downloaded it originally. The program is particularly useful for travellers who don't have constant access to the internet but want to watch YouTube videos for playback later. It's also remarkably powerful supporting everything from videos downloaded on DailyMotion, YouTube and Google Video to those that embedded in blogs and websites. Although it's not often a major issue, note that Sothink FLV Player also does not require installation of the .NET framework to work. Although there are few controls available, you can stretch the screen to whatever size you want although with YouTube videos, this often means that the quality goes down.

Amazingly lightweight and easy to use, Sothink FLV Player is a great option for those video fans on the move.

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FLVPlay is an AIR-based software app that provides you with a whole new interface from which to browse and view Youtube videos, plus saving them to your hard drive.

So what's the point of having a different Youtube interface? First, you can now watch online videos without a web browser, which makes it lighter on resources. Second, FLVPlay features a much nicer design and therefore makes the whole user experience much better, and finally you get access to some extra features like the ability to show more thumbnails than the original website or, more important, the possibility to save videos right to your hard drive in FLV format.

But FLVPlay is not all advantages. On the downside, it seemed to be a bit slower than Youtube when loading videos, especially after watching the first one. This first video loads in a snap but then the program takes a while to change to the next one.

FLVPlay is an attractive AIR Youtube player that may be a bit slow at times, but which also lets you save videos in FLV format to your hard drive.

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