Creating customized DVD movies is a piece of cake with Droppix DVD Maker. The program takes care of everything so that you only have to worry about enjoying your favorite videos from the couch.

You can use any video files stored in your local drive (the program supports the most popular formats) or import videos right away from famous video websites like Youtube, Daily Motion or Google Video with just a single click. Droppix DVD Maker also includes several ready-to-use menu templates you can use to create personalized DVD menus, though the method to change them is not very well implemented (a double click on the current menu image would be much more intuitive than having to open the program's settings menu).

Another drawback to Droppix DVD Maker is the fact that you can't preview the video before converting and recording it to the actual disc, while other similar tools usually include a built-in player. At least the conversion process is easy and quite fast too.

Droppix DVD Maker lets you create customized DVD movies in a very easy way, but lacks some handy features found in other similar tools.

Download Droppix DVD Maker 1.5.0 in Softonic

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.

Download Elisa 0.5.10 in Softonic

The Google Desktop application allows users to search their desktop content quickly and easily. Praised for its ingenuity and criticised for its intrusiveness, Google Desktop brings the power of Google’s search engine technology to your PC.

After installing the application, you’ll have to give it some time to index the files on your PC, including emails, photos, chats, contacts and calendar events. Google Desktop will index the first 10,000 words in the first 100,000 documents on your PC. The application supports the majority of file types and you can decide which ones to index, or omit protected files, using the preferences menu.

In its latest version, which is compatible with Windows Vista, Google Desktop has been given a new transparent look, providing a pretty sleek feel to your PC. Your search results will appear in your browser (in the familiar Google web page format) and a small preview button allows you to view results without actually clicking on the corresponding link. Results are as precise as we’ve come to expect from Google searches, however we were slightly disappointed to learn that the application doesn’t offer logical 'OR' support or substring search. On another note, Google Desktop is not limited to your PC as you can cross index content from multiple machines and share some panel items with your friends.

Google Desktop is not only about search, though. Joining a marketplace already occupied by Apple’s Dashboard Widgets and Yahoo! Widgets, Google Desktop can be fitted with any number of little gadgets. These mini apps perform all kinds of functions, from fetching your mail to jotting down notes or checking up on your local weather. There are hundreds of gadgets to choose from to customize your desktop bar. Our personal favorites are: Google Translate, the Skype plug-in to check your credit and call your contacts, “Am I Blocked” to find out who’s blocked you on IM, Workspace to quickly move between tasks, System Stats to monitor your PC and Games, a selection of Flash games like Tetris and Moonlander.

When running, we found Google Desktop to use up around 30 MBs, but that can quickly increase if you add more gadgets to it. The application is also constantly re-indexing your files to incorporate your modifications and new elements. However you should rarely feel your PC slowing due to indexing.

When you’re dealing with Google, however, you know the main criticism will be about security. Because Google Desktop indexes all your documents, you’re basically opening up your PC and all your personal files to the Moutain View company. What some users fear is that Google could one day take advantage of that access or that a bug in the application would allow malicious users to infiltrate your PC and steal information.

While the intrusiveness of Google Desktop will give some users pause for thought on installing the app, Google Desktop is highly effective and simple to use. The gadgets you can add to its sidebar may not all be essential, but many of them are quite fun and original and let’s face it, the sidebar looks good. Give it a go if you think your PC is a mess and you need quick access to anything.

Download Google Desktop 5.8.809.8522 in Softonic

As English speakers, we don't usually have any problems with understanding movies and TV shows in their native language as a great percentage of them is produced in our mother tongue. However there are quite a large number of movies in other languages for which we may need SubDowbloader's help.

This program enables you to search the Internet for subtitle files for any video files you have in your computer. This means it can work the same with movies and series. The search procedure is a bit strange, as you have to select the actual video file you're searching subtitles for - instead of entering the video's title which makes more sense to me.

On the upside, the program lets you search subtitles for several files simultaneously, making the task a lot easier when you need subtitles for a complete season of your favorite TV show. You can also upload your own subtitle files, which keeps the program's database in constant growth thanks to its users.

If you ever need subtitles for your movies or TV shows then give SubDownloader a go: it may be the faster, easier way to find them.

Download SubDownloader 2.0.5.1 in Softonic

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.

Download BS.Player Free 2.31.974 in Softonic

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.

Download ALShow 1.62 Beta in Softonic

Online TV Player lets you watch 850+ free Internet TV and listen 1500+ free online radio stations on your PC. It allows watcher to watch directly into TV without having to experience the annoyances of a Web site (like slow-loading pages and pop-up ads).

No additional equipment required. Online TV Player support both Windows Media and Real Video. You can play most of stream formats in one program. It can set the screen window to any size that you want. It supports full-screen mode too.

Download Online TV Player 4.6 in Softonic

Mp3 Rocket promises users free downloads including music, movies, games, TV shows & more.
It claims to offer over 12 million songs from its network with unlimited downloads allowed, no monthly fees or bandwidth limits.

Mp3 Rocket is based on the Limewire network and comes bundled with a CD burner tailored to the program so that you can easily make copies of your favourite multimedia files.

Download MP3 Rocket 5.1.2 in Softonic

Watching television is no longer a dining-room activity. With the number of available online TV channels constantly increasing, chances are you'll end up watching TV on your computer rather than on a TV set.

Internet TV is the perfect tool to watch television on the PC. This free app gives you access to more than 5,000 TV channels that stream content over the Internet. Among such a wide offer you'll surely find something you like, from news to sports, from music to documentaries, from religion to education.

Using the program is a piece of cake. Simply select the channel you're interested in and click on the "Play" button on the right-side screen. After a few seconds of buffering, the show will start. I have to say most of the channels I tested worked perfectly fine and only a few failed to start, most of them when I tried to filter contents by country. Apparently it's better to just leave the "All countries" option enabled. Also, when a channel didn't work sometimes it showed music instead, so in the end it wasn't that disappointing.

Internet TV lets you add your own Internet TV channels, if you know any that's not currently on the list and provided you have all the necessary data. A Favorites list completes the array of included features.

Internet TV is a basic viewer with which you can access thousands of streaming TV channels worldwide. Perfect to have a sneak peek at how television looks like in other countries and other cultures!

Download InternetTV 7.12 in Softonic

With multimedia portable devices growing in popularity and features, it's not surprising that DVD ripping tools like Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate have started to offer support for them so that you can take your favorite movies anywhere with you.

Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate is one of those applications: a full featured DVD ripper than can extract all data inside your DVD movies and convert it right away to another video format, including the most popular ones and – of course – video formats for mobile devices such as the iPod, the iPhone and the PSP.

Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate lets you choose the video size, image quality and audio quality, and also create and use different profiles according to the target format or device. Also, Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate lets you trim specific video fragments, edit video effects, adjust subtitles and even add a watermark so that you obtain fully customized DVD video and audio files.

Additionally, Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate can help you clip video segment, crop video size, edit video effects, adjust subtitle, and add video watermark, to get the customized DVD audio and video files.

In addition to ripping the whole DVD, you can also select specific chapters and convert only those. The whole process is done via drop-down menus and Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate is generally very easy to use.

With Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate you can rip the contents of your favorite DVD movies and convert them to different formats – including mobile video - in just a few easy steps.

Download Xilisoft DVD Ripper Ultimate 5.0.40.0729 in Softonic

Esmas Player is a truly multimedia application that provides the user with almost any tool they may need to enjoy image, music and video files on the computer.

The program's interface is suspiciously similar to that of iTunes, which makes us wonder why is it that developers weren't able to come up with a more original design. Similarities to iTunes don't end here, though: as you'll see, you can organize your library, play your favorite songs, edit tags, listen to podcasts, synchronize contents with your portable music device and even buy music online. Some people may find this resemblance somewhat uncomfortable – like a cheap imitation – but it's also a way to make the program look familiar and be easy to use from the very beginning.

Leaving comparisons aside, Esmas Player goes a step forward and also enables you to organize photos and videos, and also features extended functionality such as a disc burner, a DVD player and support for online TV channels and radio stations. During our tests, however, I had the impression that some of its functions were not properly implemented or at least not as easy to use as I expected. Also, though the program's language can be set to English, both the installer and documentation haven't been translated from Spanish yet.

In all, Esmas Player works fine as an all-in-one multimedia organizer, but it still needs some improvements in usability – as well as adding the necessary distance between iTunes and itself in order to avoid odious comparisons.

Download Esmas Player 11026 in Softonic

Online Live lets you watch 3645+ free Internet TV, on demand videos and listen free online radio stations. The live television channels database is the biggest worldwide. No additional equipment required. Online TV Player supports Windows Media Player. You can play most stream formats in this program.

Download OnlineLive 6.3.41 in Softonic

FireANT is an RSS video aggregator and media player that helps you keep up to date with the latest internet TV channels and programming.

With the FireANT Player, you can subscribe to any RSS 2.0 channel and automatically download fresh media content to watch and listen to. In this way, you don't need to keep checking your favourite channel - whether it be CNN or ESPN - to see whether there's anything you want to watch on as FireANT delivers it all to you in much the same way as Google Reader tracks your favourite blogs.

The other big draw of FireANT is that the media player is incredibly versatile - rivalling VLC Player in some respects - as it's able to play just about any format without the need for codecs including Quicktime, Windows Media, Flash, Real Media. FireANT can even sync downloaded files with portable media players such as iPod and Sony PSP.

In addition, FireANT player comes with an integrated Yahoo! Video Search function. When FireANT was originally released this was probably quite useful but now that Google is king, you probably won't find much use for it. You can also interact with video creators by sending comments to them based on their content although I'm sceptical as to whether this actually works properly.

A format free and fun way to keep track of your favourite programming, FireANT is maybe a bit dated now but better than having to keep checking channels for new content yourself.

Download FireANT Beta in Softonic

anyTV lets you play TV channels and radio stations that stream their contents on the Internet. The program features a huge list of channels from hundreds of countries around the world.

The list is divided into TV channels, radio stations and videos, the latter being presumably videos from web pages about the most diverse topics. Lists can be filtered according to several topics and also arranged by rating, bitrate or genre. In spite of that, sometimes the channel list is difficult to manage especially when it's too long. One feature I missed, for example, is being able to jump to a certain part of the list by pressing its first letter on the keyboard.

anyTV looks very promising: a nice interface, hundreds of TV channels to watch and radio stations to listen to, a Favorites system, the possibility to rate channels… unfortunately while testing the program we found way too many channels that didn't work well or didn't even load at all. And what's worse, the program didn't show up any error message to let us know if we were missing any codec or other necessary component.

Watch streaming TV channels on your computer without any additional hardware.

Download anyTV 2.20 in Softonic

Alarms - you either love 'em or you hate 'em depending on what it means. If it means getting up for work, then chances are it's not your favourite sound but it doesn't have to be as painful as an annoying high pitched tone.

Citrus Alarm Clock is a simple but elegant alarm clock designed for those that want to wake up in style via their PC. It's much more advanced than a normal alarm clock and it gives you many more options over how you'd like to wake-up. The program is operated via a simple interface which allows you to set as many different alarms as you like using your existing media player. It therefore supports as many media formats as your player does which makes it pretty flexible in what tone, music or noise you choose to wake up to. You can even wake up to visual images of you want by setting it to play your TV Tuner or favourite show saved on your hard drive.

So that whatever you choose doesn't wake you too harshly, it features a gentle fade-in function to wake you up gently or you can choose to listen to it into your sleep up to a certain time when it will automatically mute until it starts again when you have to wake up. In this latest version, the developer had added a number of cool new features too including a snooze feature and a much more attractive and intuitive GUI.

Simple to use, powerful and completely free, this program could make those early starts just that little bit less painful.

Download Citrus Alarm Clock 2.0 in Softonic

If you've ever wanted to have a look at foreign television broadcasts, just out of curiosity or to improve your language skills, now you have a chance to watch programs from Australia to Mexico and everywhere in between.

SuperTV’s interface is very basic (it consists of nothing more than a video window and a channel-selection sidebar). However, the variety of channels from all over the world is huge and, when all are working, is surely a plus in comparison to its competitors. We encountered problems in watching US and UK channels but the application didn't display any message to explain if the programs were not shown because of copyright reasons or because of temporary connection problems.

That said, the video streaming is very slow to start and the video quality is not as good as what you can get with other programs. It's nice though to browse around channels from all over the world, even if what you can get are mostly satellite channels, so not necessarily very representative of the television you could get in a specific country.

Unfortunately, not yet a substitute for your satellite subscription but it could be an interesting introduction to other countries’ TV channels.

Download SuperTV 5.32.3 in Softonic

Beyond TV allows you to gain control over your entertainment experience. With Beyond TV, you determine what you want to watch and when you want to watch it. With incredible features and extensive setting options, television is under your control.

Features of the program:

• No subscription fees
• Skip commercials and other parts of TV shows
• Search for shows by actor, director, or title
• Intelligent Electronic Program Guide resolves conflicts
• Record HDTV from free, over-the-air digital TV signals
• Record in DivX, MPEG-2 and WMV formats
• Search for movies and sports, as well as by other categories
• Play and pause FM radio stations

Download Beyond TV 4.8.2 in Softonic

If you'd like to see what TV and radio are like in other countries, the best option is to take a look at channels that broadcast content online, with an application like InteresTV.

This app, whose name seems to have been misspelled, lets you browse radio and TV channels from all over the world. It features an original interface designed like a TV set, but unfortunately loaded with ads from Google.

The most striking feature about InteresTV is the huge number of channels it includes - more than 3,200 – from dozens of countries all over the world. Of course, this doesn't mean they're all perfectly working, but having such a wide range to choose from makes up for the odd malfunctioning channel. On the downside, the channels are listed on a never-ending drop-down menu on top of the interface, which makes the list quite uncomfortable to use, and the program lacks advanced options you can find in similar tools such as support for bookmarks or the ability to record channels.

InteresTV lets you take a sneak peek at TV and radio channels from all over the world, though is not as complete as other similar programs.

Download InteresTV 1.0 in Softonic

Sometimes an image is worth a thousand words, and this is why videos are usually the handiest way to share a tip o create a tutorial.

Screen recording is child's play with TipCam. This program enables you to capture any activity that takes place on your screen and save it as an online video that you can share with anybody. You can show off your latest battles in your favorite game, or help a customer that needs assistance with a particular software application.

TipCam is very easy to use. You can enable, pause and resume screen recording with hotkeys, plus make the "camera" follow your mouse with its pan/zoom function, although there's no possibility to define the size of this zoom.

On the downside, the program only saves videos to FLV. That said, if you want to publish them online, you can use the developer's website - after signing up for free. While this can be a good way to share them, I'd still prefer having a wider format variety to save my videos.

With TipCam you can easily record any activity on your screen. Unfortunately videos are saved only in FLV format .

Download TipCam 1.0.55.1795 in Softonic

Make no mistake: the media industry has changed significantly in the last couple of years. Big corporations are now starting to consider the possibility that their traditional business models could well be about to crumble around them. Newspapers are facing the blogging threat, podcasting is the cool alternative to radio, and now the big TV stations must be starting to sweat a little following the dawn of free online video services such as YouTube, Joost and the one we're about to review: Miro.

After a few months in beta stage, Miro has reached version 1.0, which is considered as a new milestone in the production and development of video and TV content for the Web. Miro is defined by its developers as "the open-source Internet TV platform". In fact, it's been built by a non-profit organization called the Participatory Culture Foundation, which aims to bring together a community of broadcasters to create, what it calls, an 'Internet video ecosystem'. But besides all these elaborate definitions, Miro is simply a great application to watch online videos.

You could now be wondering what's the point of using Miro if you can get those same videos from other places? Well, Miro makes the process faster and much easier. The program uses open protocols to let you subscribe to video channels and video blogs that are fed in via RSS, and uses BitTorrent to download the files. You can also watch videos from Youtube and Dailymotion, or use it to subscribe to a Youtube channel you like, for example. The program supports video playlists and can resume playback just where you stopped.

The inclusion of the 'Channel Guide' is a welcome one, as it helps you get started with the program and also lets you search and browse the various channels effortlessly. Not only can you browse through the existing channel list, but you can easily add new channels simply by clicking a button to subscribe. There are more than two thousand channels available, and all of them are free. Beware, however, that the video quality may vary from one channel or video source to another.

Another great benefit of Miro is that it can handle a wide variety of video formats and, as a good open-source project, it ignores DRM and patents. These and other interesting features are used to compare Miro to Joost, but I think there's no reason for this comparison: they're just different applications with different purposes. In any case, Miro's first public release is an excellent example of how video content from different sources can be integrated into one single application and served directly to your PC in a fast, easy and elegant way.

Download Miro 1.2.4 in Softonic