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. For those looking for a fresh alternative to these ballooning apps, KMPlayer could be your ticket.

Like similar app UMPlayer, KMPlayer has a small desktop footprint and its minimalist interface makes video playback quick and hassle-free. The player's 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 and customize KMPlayer, such as visualizations, plug-ins and playback options. But the beauty of KMPlayer is that these are turned on at your request rather than being forced upon you at the outset.

KMPlayer 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.

If you're looking for a customizable, light yet powerful video player, KMPlayer is exactly what you need.

Download KMPlayer 3.2.0.0 in Softonic

BS.Player is a great media player that features anything you need to watch movies or any other kind of video on your PC. BS.Player 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. Also, if you're missing any video or audio codecs, BS.Player will download them right away during installation.

BS.Player 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, making it very similar to apps like UMPlayer. 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 volumes...

The only drawback to BS.Player, if any, is the fact that the program doesn't include any documentation except for a FAQ section that you need to open in your browser. Not that you can't use BS.Player without help, but it's always nice to have some documentation to rely on in case you get stuck.

BS.Player lets you enjoy your favorite movies on the PC with a wide range of features: subtitles, screenshots, bookmarks and more.

Download BS.Player Free 2.61.1065 in Softonic

Interface

The program’s simple, almost minimalist interface hides 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.

Movie formats

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

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.

Conclusions

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

Nowadays, its far more sophisticated than it was in its humble beginnings and features social and portability options that make it a widely-used application for those who want to share films and take the player on the move with them.

Installation of RealPlayer SP is a little annoying though. When you install it you are offered a range of options, such as to add a desktop shortcut to RealPlayer's game site, download Google Chrome, plus you have to close and restart your browser (you'll require the latest version of Internet Explorer). The installation process also takes a couple of minutes after this to fully install. Finally, when it starts, you're offered a chance to upgrade to paid versions of RealPlayer SP before you have to register yourself with Real Networks. If all this messing around doesn't appeal, check out a slimline app like UMPlayer.

When you're up and running, RealPlayer SP features a wide interface where you will notice some ads and videos recommended by Real Networks. While this looks a bit cluttered and messy, the real benefits of RealPlayer SP come in using it as a portable player and converter. RealPlayer SP is ideal for playing and sharing video with your friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter and it works easily with BlackBerry, iPod, iPhone and other game systems. The new video converter allows you to copy online video to your iPod, Xbox, PS3 and other devices. Unfortunately, you can't rip DVDs with RealPlayer SP, although this is available as a feature if you upgrade to RealPlayer Plus.

One of the most annoying aspects of RealPlayer SP however is that it takes ages to start whether streaming a clip or just opening a standalone video file. This may be due to the many extensions and plugins that come preinstalled with it. There are also too many clicks and mouse movements required just to switch to a full-screen playback mode when viewing a clip on a web page. Also, it appears that you are able to watch a selection of channels for free in the 'SuperPass' menu, such as BBC World and Al Jazeera. However, when one of the channels finally opens, you are informed that you only get five-minute free-views unless you purchase a SuperPass.

That said, RealPlayer SP isn't bad at all. It's comparable to Windows Media Player 12 as they both have some impressive ways of organizing your music. For me, the best feature is the CD burner which is something I've used from the early days of RealPlayer SP. The sheer quality of some of the media only available in Real formats makes RealPlayer SP an essential item in the toolkit of any fan of Internet video and audio.

Most recently, RealPlayer has been updated with far better mobile and social networking integration. You can now copy your favorite videos to an iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and dozens of other popular devices automatically. In addition, you can import photos taken on an Android, BlackBerry, or digital camera to a PC with one click, then easily share favorite photos on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. There's also a handy integrated RealPlayer Downloader for downloading RealPlayer clips for viewing later or sharing with friends.

RealPlayer SP is a media player that has suffered from serious feature-creep over the years. However, it's still a must-have on any PC that's connected to the Internet.

Download RealPlayer SP 14 in Softonic

Like UMPlayer, GOM Player is one of those apps that goes unnoticed but proves to be excellent when you take the time to give it a try. It's a compact, easy-to-use video player lets you enjoy video files and movies in a wide variety of formats. What's more, you won't have problems with codecs because GOM Player already includes them – and if not, it automatically searches for the appropriate codec online.

GOM Player shows off a sleek interface with support for skins and has other powerful features: support for subtitles, favorites manager, support for playlists, use mouse and keyboard shortcuts for many functions and more. What GOM Player misses, for example, is the ability to take screenshots or even more important, to resume playback right where you left it (something I personally use a lot).

GOM Player offers to install the Google Toolbar during its installation process but you may as well decline the offer. As for the rest, it's a great video player that's well worth a try… even if you already have a favorite player.

GOM Player is a visually appealing video player with very interesting features and which, above all, solves any problem you may have with codecs.

Download GOM Player 2.1.40.5106 in Softonic

It truly is a universal player and there's little you will be able to throw at it, either audio or video, that it won't be able to handle.

You can only select one audio track which is a bit annoying and it's clear that from the perspective of audio in general, it's very limited. There are few controls over equalization options other than a simple volume control.

There is support for a range of video formats in Dziobas Rar Player, including, MVK, RAR, DVD, AVI, MPEG, OGG, RAR, and even password-protected RAR files.

Although the quality of playback can be a little jerky, Dziobas Rar Player provides a great way to make sure that your compressed video files are in tact, and that you're actually unpacking the right movie.

Download Dziobas Rar Player 0.009.50 in Softonic

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.

Download BS.Player Pro 2.57.1048 in Softonic

Now, I don't know if MPlayer is that difficult (it doesn't look like it is, according to the screenshots I've seen) but I think this GUI is certainly not helping much. It features a nicely designed interface and really simple usability – something we users should be thankful for – but it's also quite buggy. To begin with, I had problems when using the scroll bar, with the video not moving to the position I had set. Then, if you resize the window or open any other window on top of it, the covered area is blackened, meaning it doesn't display the video image anymore.

It's a shame RulesPlayer has these glitches, because other than that it seems quite a complete player, featuring support for all popular video and audio formats, subtitles and including also all the necessary codecs so that you don't have to download them separately.

As a new GUI for MPlayer, RulesPlayer does provide a simple, nicely designed environment which, unfortunately, doesn't work as well as expected.

Download RulesPlayer 0.99.3 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 8.1 RC2 in Softonic