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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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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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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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 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.

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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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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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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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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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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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, Subdownloader 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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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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DimP is not a standard video player. In fact, if it weren't for its unique feature I wouldn't have tested it, as it's still considered a prototype.

And what's this unique feature that makes DimP so different from other video players? Well, DimP lets you manipulate the contents of the video right away in order to move it ahead or go back. On other words, instead of using a regular slider, DimP lets you grab any element on the screen and drag it with your mouse in order to move the video file onwards or backwards.

It's a bit confusing to put it into words, so I'd advise you to test the program – or at least, view the video in the Extras tab - in order to see how it works with your own eyes. This is truly an amazing technology, though clearly only on its first stages.

DimP includes a few example videos to test the program's functionality. These videos are already prepared to be used with the program, but if you want to use your own videos (only AVI format suppported), you'll have to let DimP process them before, a job that can take ages.

Though still at a very early stage, DimP is a very interesting video player that shows off new ways to move video files onwards and backwards.

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Since bursting onto the internet in 2000, BSPlayer has been downloaded over 60 million times according to its developers. The aim of the player is to "enable users to focus on watching the movie instead of dealing with poor computer capabilities or running around looking for a proper settings and codecs." For those that have had problems with mainstream media players on offer, BSPlayer may prove a useful alternative.

It supports all kinds of media including avi, mpeg, asf, wmv, mp3, etc but also specializes in DivX playback. Many users report that DivX files that wouldn’t work on other players, did in BS Player. One of the major drawbacks with many media players is resource hogging but BSPlayer consumes no more than many audio players and start-up is pleasantly fast. Because it does not use much of the processing power, its more suited to those users with slower machines that are not looking for too many fancy features.

BSPlayer also comes bundled with BSMediaLibrary which can manage all your multimedia content and enables you to create your own playlists. It also has a multitude of skins available for download, many designed by other devoted users.

The major drawback with BSPlayer is the concealed menu which appears and disappears when you wave the mouse over it. This becomes increasingly annoying if you are listening to something whilst using another application. However, loading subtitles is easy and dragging and dropping files into the screen to open files means you can avoid the annoying menu. You also have a small graphic equaliser and can load the player with other codecs that you might need.

Overall, definitely worth trying for anyone who has had problems with DivX files or are tired of bulky mainstream offerings.

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It's considered to be a must have free video player. It can play any type of video including 192 video codec and 85 audio coded - like VLC player, but with a nicer interface. It is also supposed to optimize CPU usage and use as few resources as possible. The package contains optimized builds for Pentiums, Athalons and Dual Core processors. You just select the one suitable for you during the installation process.

The package installs both MPlayer and the front-end SMPlayer, which is the same program but with a nicer looking interface. A number of useful features are included: the subtitles option for example, allows you to load subtitle files and link them to a video. You also have many options to deinterlace, denoise and apply filters to improve the video rendering.

I've noticed minor usability issues: when you stop the video for example, the pointer in the status bar should restart from the beginning, whereas with this player it just stays at the point of the film you stopped it, making no difference with the pause function. Also the program doesn't remember the volume of the sound when you close and re-open the application.

MPlayer supports 192 video codec and also video streaming, QuickTime and RealAudio files making it the perfect choice if you don't want to mess around with a different player for each video format.

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FLV Player allows Flash developers to playback .flv files without the need to load them from a server. Just select the file or drag/drop it onto the player to view it. Standard playback controls included. The program can be optionally associated with .flv files, so you can just double-click them to play.

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There comes a time when we all get tired of heavy and bloated media players such as Windows Media Player and even iTunes.

Sometimes you just want to insert a track or play and mp3 and not be bothered bu codec warnings, updates or RAM shortages. That's why Complete Media Player has been designed and while hardly the most sophisticated media player on the market, it's refreshingly easy to use and light in operation. Complete Media Player is a highly simple player which not only plays music, but also allows you to watch videos and compile playlists. However, what is annoying is that there's no codec pack - you have to install each one separately depending on what you are watching. In a way, this is good because having too many codecs can slow a player down but ultimately, it's very tedious to insert a new DivX file and find out that you are lacking a specific codec. The play controls are very basic - there is shuffle, repeat and start, stop fast forward and rewind functions. And you can also watch your videos in full screen mode either by right clicking or using the basic file menu at the top.

I would only recommend this player if you have a particularly slow machine or need something that is extremely light on ram and only intend to play one specific type of film.

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This open source multimedia player allows you to watch films by just dragging and dropping the file on the video screen. It claims to support so many codecs that you’ll no longer need to download them. According to our test, though, this is not so true.

The interface is very elegant and the option for scrolling through the film has a pleasant, immediate response. It surely supports many different formats but in our test it didn’t work with DivX files while other competitors like Media Player Classic or VLC media player did. Also, when you open Cineplay for the first time, it tells you that an update is available and asks you whether you want to update the program, but if you click yes, you’ll just get a “404: Page not found” screen. A bit disappointing as a start.

A good option if you want a multi-format reader which is very fast to run and with a minimalist-elegant interface, remembering though that there are less stylish solutions which support a wider range of video formats.

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