VLC media player is the most successful free open source multimedia player out there with over 500 million downloads according to the developers. In particular, VLC media player is a great alternative to , iTunes, and RealPlayer. It's lightweight, fast, easy to use and most importantly, plays almost anything.

Note that versions of VLC media player compatible with Mac OS X 10.1 to 10.6 are available. The main download link is version 2 for the 64 bit Intel version compatible with OS X 10.5 and above. However, you can find VLC Player for OS X 10.4.11 Intel Macs here. There is not, and there will never be, a version of VLC media player for Mac OS 9 say the developers.

It's been two and a half years since version 1.0 was released and version 2 ("Twoflower") brings a new interface, faster decoding, support for more formats and the ability to play HD and BluRay. It still remains however the most stable, flexible and lightweight audio and video player around today. While other media players will play unusual formats after downloading a codec, or simply refuse to play things, VLC media player handles tons of formats, from MPEG to FLV and RMBV files. Version 2 has seen some important additions too such as support for 10 bit codes plus multi-threaded decoding for H.264, MPEG-4/Xvid and WebM.

Also useful is the fact that you can use VLC media player to preview files you are downloading since it plays incomplete parts of video files. VLC media player is not just for video playback however. It also offers superb integration with video channel streaming services such as Channels.com giving you access to channels such as ESPN, Reuters and National Geographic. Just right-click or CMD-click on the playlist, select Services Discovery and Channels.com. Channels.com will then appear in your VLC media player playlist. Click on it to reveal the the different categories of channels available. Click on the category you want and a drop down list of all available channels appears in VLC media player. Just click on the channel you want to watch and streaming should begin almost immediately.

VLC media player also has great hotkey support and if you take the time to learn the shortcuts so it can be controlled without touching your mouse. If you're watching DVDs or video files through it, this is not an issue. For music, it plays more or less any file and features an equalizer and playlist creation. VLC media player isn't as intuitive as iTunes as a media manager, but it's a much more flexible player in terms of file formats. You can even use VLC to convert your files, and on top of all the formats and physical media it will play, many streaming protocols and TV capture cards are supported.

VLC media player makes it easy to add subtitles to your video files too - just add the SRT file to the folder where your video is kept, and it will automatically play with subtitles.

Finally, the interface has been somewhat improved in version 2 on Mac. In fact, the Mac interface is now considerably slicker than on Windows with a single window for everything. However, it's only available in 2 colors: Lion grey and QTX black. There are also new extensions support and better Lion integration. The preferences menu is still comprehensive without being overwhelming, and there is extensive documentation online.

Don't forget to check out some of our blog posts such as VLC media player v KMPlayer, How to rotate a video with VLC media player, How to sync audio with video in VLC media player and How to use subtitles with VLC media player.

There's very little to fault with VLC media player. It's a superb lightweight media player that will successfully play the most stubborn files where other players fail.

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Flip4Mac has been completely rewritten to meet the new requirements in OS X 10.7 and 10.8. Flip4Mac 3.0 includes an option to install Microsoft Silverlight which is Microsoft's answer to Adobe Flash although you don't have to install it. However, it's useful to have it as some video streaming events on the net use Silverlight to deliver content.

First some background to Flip4Mac. WMV is Microsoft's own video format which by default, won't play on Macs since Apple's own video format is QuickTime. The most common solution for users has been to install a multimedia player such as VLC media player or a plugin such as Perian or Flip4Mac which both allow QuickTime to play WMV files. However, with Perian only supporting older versions of WMA and now no longer being developed, Flip4Mac is set to become the most logical choice for users, especially because it is officially endorsed by Microsoft and effectively, the official Windows Media Player for Mac.

Flip4Mac 3.0 is not just a plugin for QuickTime however. For the first time, it introduces its own player - Flip Player - but it will still allow you to view WMV videos in QuickTime. The difference from the previous version of Flip4Mac however is that it now leaves a watermark in the top right-hand corner of QuickTime although Telestream say they hope this will be gone when the public beta is released. Flip Player doesn't feature this watermark with the additional bonus that it has some powerful added extras although many of them are only available in the Pro version.

The free version of Flip Player in Flip4Mac 3.0 is very clean in appearance and does a good job of not obscuring video content during playback as there are no overlay controls. Instead, the player controls only appear when you move the mouse cursor over it. Flip Player also includes a new "Dim Lights" feature which neatly darkens everything around it so that you focus on just the video. Playback controls are enhanced with slow motion options and most functions can be performed using keyboard shortcuts.

Among the more powerful features of the basic version of Flip Player are the ability to Crop, Rotate, Scale and Trim video which is not possible in QuickTime X. You can also now convert and export WMV video for iMovie and Final Cut Pro but without creating quality damaging H.264 files. Instead, a native AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) file is created for iMovie to avoid additional transcoding when importing. For Final Cut Pro users, it creates a ProRes file that automatically sets the correct dimensions and native video codec that fit with project settings. You can even export sound from your favorite videos to an iPhone ringtone and use the trimming features to refine it.

If you want to change the general plugin settings of Flip4Mac 3.0, they can be accessed at the bottom of your Mac system preferences under "Other". There are several different configurations options including for the Flip Player media browser, upgrade, update and plugin settings.

Note that Flip4Mac 3.0 no longer supports OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (although version 2.4.4 still does) as its been designed for the new demands of Lion and Mountain Lion such as Gatekeeper aimed at making Macs more secure. The benefit of this is that Flip4Mac 3.0 features much improved 64-bit support for OS X 10.7 and 10.8 although the QuickTime video components have remained 32-bit due to the QuickTime component architecture. However, audio codecs are 64-bit now.

Overall, the introduction of Flip Player is the major innovation in Flip4Mac 3.0. It offers some powerful features that aren't available in the free version of QuickTime, and it's very well designed to suit the look of OS X. However, it lacks some of the features of QuickTime (such as screen recording) and some users may feel it's not quite as slick as Apple's own player.

Flip4Mac 3.0 remains a powerful solution for anyone that needs to play WMV and Windows Media on their Mac and the introduction of Flip Player is a significant enhancement that makes managing WMV files on Mac easier than ever.

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Note that this particular version only works on Snow Leopard i.e. OS X 10.6.3+. QuickTime X has superseded it but it does not support older formats. QuickTime Player 7 supports older media formats, such as QTVR, interactive QuickTime movies, and MIDI files on Snow Leopard and OS X Lion. It also accepts QuickTime 7 Pro registration codes, which turn on QuickTime Pro functions.

As you would expect from an Apple product, Quicktime is extremely slick to use to the point of sometimes "hiding" features that you would expect to be more readily available - such as creating playlists for example. When it comes to performing basic functions such as playback, it's very easy to use although launching it is still a little slow.

If you want to really get the most out of QuickTime 7 however, you need to upgrade to the Pro version which allows you to do much more such as edit and convert video files. QuickTime 7 is designed to play Apple's MOV video format although as mentioned earlier, it can play much more than this with Perian installed. However, there are other players such as VLC media player which do this without third party plugins and are much quicker to launch.

Quicktime is by no means essential nowadays but it still remains Apple's flagship media player and is definitely worth upgrading to the Pro version.

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While comparisons with other similar services – such as Last.fm – are inevitable, Spotify has certain characteristics that make it stand out from the rest. You can search the entire Spotify music database in several ways (by artist, album, genre, decade, label brand…), create as many playlists as you want and share them with other users, and learn more about your favorite bands thanks to extensive, highly detailed biographies. Spotify also helps you discover new music through the “Related artists” and Radio service.

There are three types of Spotify accounts: Free, Unlimited and Premium. Free is limited to 10 hours of free ad-supported a month (approximately 200 songs) and lets you play each song up to five times. Unlimited has no ads and no playback restrictions. Finally, Premium includes high-quality MP3 (also with no ads or restrictions) and also includes an offline mode for playlists.

The one big criticism of Spotify was the lack of social features. Luckily the developers took note of this complaint and include a bunch of new social elements in Spotify’s next version – together with the Library, a centralized area from which you can manage your music collection – including Spotify’s lists and your own MP3 files, which you can now import into Spotify from your hard drive, your Windows Media Player Library or your iTunes library.

The brand new features included in the latest version of Spotify now let you manage and sync the music in your iPod, iPhone or Android. Also, the Spotify mobile app has been made available for anyone, and not just Premium users. Last, but not least, Spotify has launched its MP3 download service, thanks to which you can buy and download individual songs and also your custom playlists. The price depends on the number of songs you want to download – the longer the playlist, the less you pay for each track. You can pay with credit card or Paypal, though the latter is not accepted if you only purchase one song.

Just like a good wine, Spotify gets better with age. If you don’t mind the limitations in the Free version (or you’re willing to pay for the Unlimited/Premium one) it’s probably time to ditch your old desktop music player.

Spotify lets you browse, play, share and buy music, including not only your lifelong favorite bands, but also brand new styles and artists.

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It supports QuickTime and FFmpeg and also supports subtitles. You can watch videos in full screen mode and it allows you to switch instantly between different aspect ratios from default to widescreen. It seems that Movist has been designed as a replacement for Quicktime although unfortunately, it doesn't support the Apple remote like the former does.

You can configure keyboard shortcuts to fast-forward and rewind Movist videos but it's the encoding features that will appeal to the majority of users. You can switch between Quicktime and FFmpeg on the fly which is something definitely not available with Quicktime with which you need Perian installed to encode into FFmpeg.

Extremely lightweight, great for subtitles and excellent for those that need to encode and decode Quciktime and FFmpeg formats, Movist is generally an excellent all round video player.

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VLC media player nightly supports partially encrypted Blu-ray discs and brings a more polished look and enhancements to the options and codecs in this flexible player. VLC media player nightly is more visually striking with a new sidebar allowing quick access to your playlist, media folders or online streams. The final version will also include a search tool so you can find missing media much more easily than before.

Blu-ray support

The most important feature in VLC media player nightly however is Blu-ray support. However, for legal reasons, it will only open partially encrypted Blu-ray discs. It can also now output audio to Android and iOS devices. Note that it can also be quite unstable as this is effectively a beta release of VLC media player.

VLC media player nightly is an exciting glimpse at how VLC media player will look and finally supports Blu-ray discs.

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iTunes 11 has been completely redesigned from the ground up. Development of iTunes has been stagnant the last few years so Apple needs to get this one right. Has Apple nailed it or is the new iTunes a mess? Read on to find out.

The interface of iTunes has been completely re-imagined. Everything is simpler and space is better utilized. In the previous version of iTunes, there was a persistent bar on the left where you can access playlists, albums, devices, and more. While it provided quick access to those features, most users didn't use them most of the time. Apple has scrapped this and has made the default album view take up the entire window.

Browsing by album is a pleasure. Click on an album and the tracks will show up below. iTunes also analyzes the color of album artwork to create a colored background for each individual album. It works well for the most part but the effect blurs the album art around the edges.

New in iTunes 11 is the "Up Next" feature, which is basically a fancy name for your queue. Add songs to your queue from wherever you are in the interface. You don't need to manage a playlist to arrange and rearrange the tracks to your liking.

Creating playlists is much improved. Instead of having to jump in and out a playlist to add and arrange tracks, playlists now have a dedicated pane on the right where you can manipulate tracks without having to jump around the program.

iCloud integration has also been tightened. Every track you've bought in iTunes will now show up in your music library, whether or not it has been downloaded. Click on it to download the album. User can now also stream directly from the cloud instead of having to download the track first. This also applies to all your TV and movies that were purchased in iTunes. There's also a dedicated tab for iTunes Match, Apple's music matching service to make all of your tracks available across devices, if they're available in the iTunes store.

The iTunes store has also gone through a redesign with featured content up top. Top lists are still there and are easier to browse. iTunes 11 will also allow you to access the iTunes store content from your music library, suggesting similar artists and tracks, without having to take you to the iTunes store.

The mini player has also been completely redesigned and is actually useful now. The mini player has gotten smaller but utilizes that small space much better than previous versions. Player controls will show up with you hover your mouse over the mini player. There's access to search and your Up Next queue can be manipulated from the mini player.

Devices now show up as a button at the top right. Clicking on it will take you to a detailed page where you can manage everything. Choose what you want synced, manage your apps, and even play music directly from your iOS device. Everything is easier to read and comprehend in the device tab.

The only thing missing from iTunes 11 is a music streaming service. iCloud gives users the ability to download tracks locally but not stream them. There is no subscription service in iTunes to compete with the likes of Spotify, Rdio, and Xbox Music. It's only matter of time before Apple releases its own music subscription service but it's disappointing that Apple didn't release it with iTunes 11.

iTunes is still one of the best media players around. It has gotten easier to use, feels less bloated, but is still missing a music subscription service.

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MPlayerOSX impresses by playing virtually any video file. It also supports many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs, and enables you to watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies, although if the latter format is your main concern, you’d be better off with Windows Media Player for Mac.

Note that this MPlayerOSX package installs both MPlayerOSX 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. MPlayerOSX also gives you many options to deinterlace, denoise and apply filters to improve the video rendering.

There a few glitches that don't make MPlayerOSX quite as appealing as VLC, however. One is that you can't drag and drop video folders for autoplay. Also, you can't save or shuffle playlists or define keyboard shortcuts, while moving your cursor over any part of the main interface menu causes videos to automatically pause. Also MPlayerOSX doesn't remember the sound volume when you close and re-open the application.

If for any reason you're having problems with VLC or you want an alternative to Windows Media Player and RealPlayer, MPlayerOSX is a very impressive app.

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Of course, there are now hundreds of players out there that play DivX but whichever you use, your files need to be encoded in DivX to work properly. The only way to do this is to run them through a converter such as DivX 7 which converts your files to the latest version of the DivX standard. DivX 7 for Mac provides everything you need to enjoy high-quality digital videos including high definition H.264 (.mkv) videos with AAC audio.

The DivX for Mac download includes the DivX Player plus trial versions of the DivX Pro Codec (6-month trial) and DivX Converter (15-day trial). The DivX player is one of the sleekest out there featuring translucent windows, clean play controls and on-demand scrub bar. It will also play Quicktime and other popular formats. The converter is extremely simply to use as it merely requires you to drag and drop files into it's tiny interface. Conversions can be rather slow though depending on the size of the file you want to convert.

DivX 7 takes DivX to new levels of quality although since so many other players now playback DivX, the price to upgrade may put off many. If you want the real deal with the converter as well though, DivX 7 promises the best and most accurate DivX conversions and playback

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DivX Web Player lets you watch DivX videos directly in your web browser without resorting to the standalone player bringing the DivX playing experience even closer to you. DivX Web Player allows you to play videos in full screen with navigation controls, or in a separate window so you can continue browsing other sites without losing the video. It's a particularly interesting tool for bloggers and webmasters because it allows you to embed DivX videos with a simple slice of HTML code. You can even change the skin of the player on your blog to give it an extra personal look.

When DivX Web Player detects a video, it offers you the chance of saving them to disk but while it is playing, you can watch playback. There have been reported problems of it not working very well in Firefox 3, although DivX claims this has been fixed now. However, when switching back from Embedded mode, to Windowed mode, I found that the screen went black even though the video and sound continued to play.

As you'd expect from DivX however, the quality of both sound and vision is outstanding. There are also several useful preferences to choose from. By clicking on the DivX logo in the bottom-right corner of the player, you can elect to save the file to disk, switch audio tracks, control playback and switch viewing modes. There are also plenty of preferences to play with, although these could have done with a little more explanation. Most users won't know which type of processing mode to choose for example, although changing from Automatic Deblocking to Fixed Deblocking didn't seem to make much difference.

For anyone who watches a lot of DivX video online or is a big fan of the DivX player, DivX Web Player definitely won't disappoint.

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Similar in flexibility to VLC Media Player, MPlayerX can play almost any format of file or stream, is very lightweight on resources and easy to use. MPlayerX has been designed specifically with Macs in mind and supports Apple Remotes, full screen mode, changing of subtitle size and it picks up from the last point you stopped the video.

The great thing about MPlayerX is that, like VLC Media Player, it plays absolutely everything you throw at it. Many users find that if they can't play something on the former then MPlayerX can and vice versa. There's very little to fault it in that respect although it doesn't feature integrated subtitled searching like Lunettes and doesn't have channel integration like VLCPlayer.

Overall though, MPlayerX is an incredibly useful and powerful media player for Macs.

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If you've grown tired of all the big bloated players, then Vox will probably appeal. It's very basic and fast but at the same time, it does offer basic features, such as indexing and sorting of playlists. To play a music file - and Vox supports a huge array of formats - simply browse to it using Vox and off you go.

The nice thing about the app is that, if you're trying to listen to a whole album, Vox will automatically detect that the song you are loading is the first track of the album and load the rest of them at the same time - far more intuitive than even VLC Player for playing music.

Other than that, there isn't a great deal more to Vox, apart from the graphic equalizer that allows you to refine your output slightly. This also allows you to add a few effects such as reverb, echo and distortion that you'll probably never use anyway.

There's now also Growl support for Vox and an added bonus is you can scrobble music to your Last.fm account if you've got one. The lack of a decent playlist editor may frustrate you but for what it's designed as - a lightweight media player, Vox is very good.

If iTunes and Spotify aren't your thing or you just want something light and easy on your old Mac, Vox hits all the right notes.

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Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro HD includes an option to install Microsoft Silverlight which is Microsoft's answer to Adobe Flash although you don't have to install it. However, it's useful to have it as some video streaming events on the net use Silverlight to deliver content.

First some background to Flip4Mac. WMV is Microsoft's own video format which by default, won't play on Macs since Apple's own video format is QuickTime. The most common solution for users has been to install a multimedia player such as VLC media player or a plugin such as Perian or Flip4Mac which both allow QuickTime to play WMV files. However, with Perian only supporting older versions of WMA and now no longer being developed, Flip4Mac is set to become the most logical choice for users, especially because it is officially endorsed by Microsoft and effectively, the official Windows Media Player for Mac.

Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro HD is not just a plugin for QuickTime however. For the first time, it introduces its own player - Flip Player - but it will still allow you to view WMV videos in QuickTime. The difference from the previous version of Flip4Mac however is that it now leaves a watermark in the top right-hand corner of QuickTime. Flip Player doesn't feature this watermark with the additional bonus that it has some powerful added extras that are only available in this Pro version.

Amongst the advanced features of Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro HD are the ability to Crop, Rotate, Scale and Trim video which is not possible in QuickTime X. You can also convert and export WMV video for iMovie and Final Cut Pro but without creating quality damaging H.264 files. Instead, a native AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) file is created for iMovie to avoid additional transcoding when importing. For Final Cut Pro users, it creates a ProRes file that automatically sets the correct dimensions and native video codec that fit with project settings. You can even export sound from your favorite videos to an iPhone ringtone and use the trimming features to refine it.

Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro HD includes all features of Flip4Mac Player Pro plus it adds the ability to create Windows Media files using your own high definition, two-pass encoding profiles. Export WMV including VC-1 and WMA Standard, Professional and Lossless files directly from media encoding applications, such as QuickTime 7 Pro, Flip Player Pro in OS X 10.7 and 10.8, ScreenFlow, Compressor and more.

If you want to change the general plugin settings of Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro HD, they can be accessed at the bottom of your Mac system preferences under "Other". There are several different configurations options including for the Flip Player media browser, upgrade, update and plugin settings.

Note that Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro HD no longer supports OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (although version 2.4.4 still does) as its been designed for the new demands of Lion and Mountain Lion such as Gatekeeper aimed at making Macs more secure. The benefit of this is that Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro features much improved 64-bit support for OS X 10.7 and 10.8 although the QuickTime video components have remained 32-bit due to the QuickTime component architecture. However, audio codecs are 64-bit now.

Overall, the introduction of Flip Player is the major innovation in Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro HD. It offers some powerful features that aren't available in the free version of QuickTime, and it's very well designed to suit the look of OS X. However, it lacks some of the features of QuickTime (such as screen recording) and some users may feel it's not quite as slick as Apple's own player.

Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro HD remains a powerful solution for anyone that needs to play WMV and Windows Media on their Mac and the introduction of Flip Player is a significant enhancement that makes managing WMV files on Mac easier than ever.

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Mac Blu-ray player enables OS X to recognize Blu-ray devices instantly, meaning you can connect a Blu-ray to your Mac and watch Blu-ray discs. Not only that, but Mac Blu-ray Player 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 disabled.

To play protected Blu-ray movies with Mac Blu-ray Player however, you need an internet connection because Mac Blu-ray Player has to acquire a license to play the movie on your system. Mac Blu-ray Player 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 also features a certain amount of social media support. You can post reviews or comment on the film your are watching to Facebook or Twitter, which is a pretty neat feature.

Mac Blu-ray Player 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've been frustrated by the lack of Blu-ray player support for your Mac, then Mac Blu-ray Player could be your answer.

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