What can UMPlayer do?

UMPlayer boasts a wide array of options to create an excellent user experience when watching videos or listening to music. Besides the basic tools to play local files, VCD and DVD, UMPlayer can also play online TV and radio stations, and features built-in search for videos in YouTube and streaming music in Shoutcast.

Other interesting features are the screenshot tool – to capture any given frame – and the support for skins, with which you can customize the interface.

Seamless user experience

The program boasts a simple, almost minimalist interface that makes accessing all the various options and settings a real dream. There's almost learning curve and you should find UMPlayer easy to work with from the off.

UMPlayer can handles almost anything

UMPlayer already includes more than 200 codecs, which means you’ll hardly have problems to play any media file. The program can also download subtitles automatically for your foreign-language videos.

On the downside, UMPlayer doesn’t include any preloaded stations on its radio and TV lists, so unless you already know some of them this feature is pretty useless.

Conclusion

UMPlayer is a stylish, powerful media player with support for many formats and a small footprint on system resources.

Download UMPlayer 0.98 in Softonic

This simple yet full featured video player is based on the original Media Player Classic, a great open source Windows multimedia player. Shortly after the developer of this original project stopped working on it, another group of developers started coding a new player with extended functionality, though trying at the same time to keep the essence of the original program.

As a result of this, Media Player Classic Homecinema keeps exactly the same appearance as its predecessor, which makes it really easy to use – even if you have never used Media Player Classic before. It also maintains the same great features the original player offered, that is, ability to play DVD, support for subtitles and more. Oh, and best of all, it doesn't require installation.

Besides the original features, Media Player Classic Homecinema also lets you enjoy new interesting functionality such as additional video codecs (particularly H.264 and VC-1), better integration with Windows Vista (including a special 64-bit version), several bug and vulnerability fixes and option to remove tearing from your video files, though sadly I didn't figure out how to use this last feature.

If you're a Media Player Classic user, you're going to love this revamped version of your favorite player. And if you're not, it's about time you start using this great program.

Download Media Player Classic Homecinema 1.6.6.6957r2 in Softonic

SPlayer is a really lightweight audio and video player that joins the media player category ready to compete against big shots such as Winamp, AIMP, BS.Player and iTunes with its most outstanding features: simplicity of use and economy of system resources.

SPlayer lets you enjoy your favorite music and movies on the computer. It supports an almost endless list of formats, including DVD and streaming media, and features a minimalist interface - almost too minimalist! - that doesn’t interfere with whatever you're playing.

But that's not all: SPlayer also includes some interesting extra characteristics, like support for subtitles, audio and video equalizer, a screenshot tool to capture individual frames and three types of interface – minimal, compact and standard.

In short, SPlayer may not be as full-featured as the other apps I mentioned at the beginning, but it's undoubtedly an excellent choice for those who value efficiency and simplicity.

SPlayer is a lightweight media player with simple design that supports a great variety of formats and includes surprisingly powerful features.

Download SPlayer 3.7.2437 in Softonic

Blu-ray Player for Windows recognizes Blu-ray devices and internal Blu-ray players instantly, meaning you can connect a Blu-ray player to your PC and watch Blu-ray discs. Not only that, but Blu-ray Player for Windows supports almost every format out there so you can use it as your default player if you choose. Even better, for the first three months it's completely free to use, although a watermark is placed on the screen and some features will be deactivated.

To play protected Blu-ray movies however, you need an internet connection because Blu-ray Player for Windows has to acquire a license to play the movie on your system. Blu-ray Player for Windows is fairly basic. There are very few options other than to add subtitles and change the audio track. When you start it up for the first time, it will also prompt you to select which files you want to associate with it so it won't take over your media files unless you allow it to.

Blu-ray Player for Windows also features a certain amount of social media support. You can post reviews or comment on the film you're are watching to Facebook or Twitter, which is a pretty neat feature.

Blu-ray Player for Windows feels a bit basic in design and you might experience some crashes and instability, but bear in mind this is the first release and the developers warn that some bugs and problems are to be expected.

If you're looking for a cross platform Blu-ray player, then Blu-ray Player for Windows could be your answer.

Download Blu-ray Player for Windows 2.8.7 in Softonic

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.

Download MPEG Streamclip 1.2 in Softonic

With MPlayer you won't have to cross your fingers and hope you have the right codec every time you open a media file on your computer. MPlayer is a simple yet great media player that supports more than 192 video and 85 audio codecs natively, which means it'll probably be able to open just about anything you throw at it.

Like I said, the interface in MPlayer is not exactly brilliant. It's quite basic, almost minimalist. But the program includes a plethora of great features to make up for it: fast response when playing videos, very low on system resources, support for subtitles, ability to take screenshots and much more, plus an extensive support for keyboard shortcuts.

Easy enough for newbies, powerful enough for experts, MPlayer is an excellent media player with support for literally hundreds of audio and video formats.

Download MPlayer 1.0 RC 2 in Softonic

In a market that's saturated with media players, Zoom Player attempts to be two players in one - a no fuss simple one and an advanced one with just about every imaginable tweaking and customization option.

It's a unique offering and chances are that if you've found your current player lacking in some department, you'll find what you're looking for in Zoom Player. If you just want a bare bones media player, then you may be better opting for something like VLC Media Player but Zoom Player lets you have your cake and eat it if you need something with a little more to offer.

The basic version of Zoom Player comes installed with a graphic equalizer, playlist editor and everything else that you'd expect in a basic player. Zoom Player's professional version however comes with a whole lot more power, including a more powerful Playlist Manager, added safety features (such as password protection), Media Definitions plus Web Remote (so you can control Zoom Player from your web browser) and an Extended command line interface, exposing many Zoom Player functions directly from the command line. Finally, the professional version also supports playback of DRM protected movies and music (Windows Media DRM).

Zoom Player's interface is slimline but expandable very easily. By clicking on the circle of dots in the bottom right hand corner however, you reveal a top bar within the main screen which is packed with features. The symbols used in the menu aren't particularly helpful as they look like hieroglyphs so your only option is to work out what each one does by trial and error. These advanced features include a station manager (for streaming radio and TV channels), skin changer and media library editor.

Indeed, the amount of options in Zoom Player available will intimidate anyone that just wants a playback application. It takes quite a while to understand what all the audio options offer, for example, although there is an extensive list of help files that comes bundled with the installation to help you. This is probably the biggest annoyance of Zoom Player: the advanced options seem extremely "spread-out" and it's rather overwhelming to get to grips with where they all, let alone what they do.

On the plus side, one particularly useful feature of Zoom Player is that if you don't have the correct codec installed, it will tell you the exact one you need without the need for a third party inspection device. Playback is smooth, files are loaded quickly and the playlist supports ID3 tags. You can also easily change skins through the skins editor plus you can download more from the developer site.

Zoom Player is two players in one - a basic player that serves you well and an advanced player that offers a lot of options that you'll probably never need but will no doubt appeal to power users.

Download Zoom Player Professional 8.6.1 RC2 in Softonic

SMPlayer uses 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, SMPlayer 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 in SMPlayer, it will start from exactly the same point where you left it with all the original settings including subtitles and audio.

Another area where SMPlayer excels is in subtitles. 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.

Download SMPlayer 0.8.5 in Softonic

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