VSO ConvertXtoDVD is an attractively designed and easy-to-use video burner that gives you the power to convert and burn a huge range of formats.

VSO ConvertXtoDVD can handle just about any format you throw at it including AVI, WMV, MKV, YouTube, OGM, MPEG and Quicktime. So instead of having to watch your downloaded films and videos on your PC, you can watch them in the comfort of your lounge on your DVD Player. VSO ConvertXtoDVD goes much further than just mere DVD creation though because it helps you create and author DVD menus.

It offers the possibility to add background video, image or audio and even have chapter and audio/subtitle menus. If you do want to add subtitles, it supports most of the major formats including SRT, .SUB/ID and .SSA and VSO CovertXtoDVD gives you control over color and font selection, and supports tags like italic, bold and the ability to toggle them on or off with DVD player remote control. The encoder makes a decent job of converting videos in terms of the output quality although it is slightly slow - estimate about 1 hour for conversion of a full movie.

A powerful and easy way to get your favourite movies and video clips onto DVD and give them an extra touch of class with a menu.

Download VSO ConvertXtoDVD 3.2.1.55 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

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.

Download PowerDVD 8.0.1730 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

While the iPod is best know for being the music lovers best friend, it can also be a useful tool for movie buffs.

Xilisoft DVD to iPod Converter lets you extract DVD video and audio tracks of DVDs and convert them to audio and video formats compatible with the iPod Video (MPEG-4, MP3, AAC or M4A formats). Like most Xillisoft converters, it's very easy to follow and use with a good looking interface to boot. Conversions are fast but most impressive is the quality which is as good as any iPod converter you'll find. The conversion process is very simple - you can choose to either rip and convert a whole film or sections of a film. Apart from this, there are some customisation options too such as setting a file limit for your conversions, normalizing audio or the ability to compress files that have been extracted to fit your iPod - useful for if you've filled your hard drive with too many tunes. You can also customise the audio, subtitles and part of a DVD that you want to rip. If you've got an iPhone, the program has also now been updated to allow you to put films on your hard drive too.

Flexible, simple to convert and fast, Xilisoft DVD to iPod Converter has more than enough to fulfil your conversion needs.

Download Xilisoft DVD to iPod Converter 5.0.40.0729 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

As video goes the way of the good old cassette tape, DVD has become universally adopted as the format of choice for watching movies. Of course, the medium is not infallible, and DVDs are as prone to scratching or damage as VHS tapes were to getting chewed by the machine. CloneDVD represents one of the easiest ways to back up your movies to disk, ensuring that even novice users don't have to worry about loss or damage of their favorite films.

The interface is wonderfully simple to use, allowing you to select your source location and destination through an obvious wizard-style menu system. The beauty of the program is that it gives you a number of options for cloning to help you compress the file size without compromising movie quality. For instance, you can choose to omit certain extras from your DVD such as foreign language subtitles or theatrical trailers. Copying speed is among the fastest around, allowing you to copy to an ISO file on your hard drive or directly to recordable DVD in a flash.

Although the application doesn't allow you to clone copy-protected media, this is of course, illegal anyway, and if you want to perform such operations then there are alternative applications available that can be used alongside CloneDVD. If it's simplicity of use and speed that you require then CloneDVD is more than capable.

Download CloneDVD 2.9.1.9 in Softonic

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.

Download SMPlayer 0.6.1 in Softonic

Despite being known mainly as a music player, the iPod has evolved into supporting video as well which means it's also a great device to watch videos on the move.

But before that, you need to convert your videos with ImTOO DVD to iPod Converter, a powerful video conversion tool that has been especially developed for iPods and iPhones. The program supports the popular video formats for iPod (MP4) plus MP3 and AAC, all of them categorized in several profiles to meet different requirements in size, audio quality, video quality and other settings. You can create your own customized profiles as well.

ImTOO DVD to iPod Converter can convert video from DVD discs or IFO files on your hard drive. Also, you can choose between converting the whole movie or just some selected chapters. Just make sure there's enough space on your device!

With ImTOO DVD to iPod Converter you can easily convert DVD videos to iPod format and watch your favorite movies on the go.

Download ImTOO DVD to iPod Converter 5.0.35.0515 in Softonic

ImTOO DVD to MP4 Converter is a fast, easy to use DVD to MP4 ripper which helps you rip DVD's, convert DVD's to MP4, AVI, MPEG4, DivX, XviD, Apple TV video and PSP AVC video format. With formats changing and developing all the time, a new profile of PSP AVC video in 480 X 272 (PSPEXT) has been added, while the profile of Apple TV video has been improved to improve playback.

The output movie is playable on most portable media players (MP4 players that is) which the developers say includes Archos AV500, Archos AV700, Archos Gmini402, iRiver PMP-100, Creative Zen Vision, PSP and iPod, etc.

The problem with many similar converters is that there are few customisation settings for those that need extra control over how their video comes out. ImToo DVD to Mp4 Converter does not disappoint here offering tons of options over such things as the aspect ratio, compression format used and other technical settings.

As a result, this program is not really suitable for those that just want a simple Mp4 conversion but is a solid product for those that need a bit more control over the output file.

Download ImTOO DVD to MP4 Converter 5.0.35.0515 in Softonic

As multimedia portable devices grow in popularity and include more advanced features, DVD ripping tools have started offering support for them so that you can watch your favorite movies on the go.

ImToo DVD Ripper Platinum is among them. This application is a complete DVD ripper that extracts all the contents of your favorite DVD movies and converts them right away to another format, including the most common audio and video formats and – of course –for mobile devices such as the iPod, the iPhone and the PSP. The program works both with DVD discs and IFO files stored on your drive.

All available formats are presented as profiles with their own characteristics, but you may as well create your own user-defined profile by selecting the video size, image quality, audio quality and channels on the right-side pane and then saving it as a new profile.

ImToo DVD Ripper Platinum features a nice interface with a skins menu that unfortunately it's empty, so you can't really change or customize it in any way.

ImToo DVD Ripper Platinum is an attractive DVD ripper, especially designed for portable devices, which makes the whole ripping process easy even for a newcomer to video conversion.

Download ImTOO DVD Ripper Platinum 5.0.35.0515 in Softonic

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.

Download BSPlayer Pro 2.28 build 964 in Softonic

They say the best way to watch a movie is in its original version. The problem comes when you don't understand the original language and that makes it a bit harder. Well, this is why subtitles were invented for, and subtitle editors too.

Subtitle Processor is probably one of the most complete subtitle editors you can find nowadays. Not only does it enable you to edit subtitles by cutting and joining sentences, correcting typos, removing extra spaces and other tools, but also helps you synchronize the text and the video image with great precision thanks to its embedded player.

Besides edition, Subtitle Processor includes an interesting extra tool with which you can easily translate subtitles from one language to another, in a double-paneled interface that allows you to have both the source and target languages always at sight.

While being a blessing for all original version cinema lovers thanks to its excellent array of subtitle edition tooks, Subtitle Processor may feel a bit too complicated for the novice user.

Download Subtitle Processor 7.7.1.0 in Softonic

You probably have lots of different videos and films on your computer you would like to play on your home DVD player. Unfortunately, many DVD players can only read the standard DVD format and it's therefore a waste of resources to burn DVDs with avi, mpeg or wmv files.

DVD Flick comes in handy because it converts PC video files to a proper DVD format, readable by all standard devices. The final file size is much bigger than the original, for example: a 600mb requires a whole DVD. The conversion process is also very slow, but you can leave the program working while you use other applications, as you can select the priority your system gives to the conversion software. The final result will be an audio_ts and a video_ts folder, which is the standard for all DVDs and you can also chose to create an iso file which can be burned again at a later date. It would have been good to have the possibility to add subtitles but unfortunately this feature is missing.

If you are patient enough, DVD Flick is the perfect solution for burning your holiday movie to DVD, meaning that whatever DVD player your friends or family have, they’ll have no escape from your not-quite-Oscar-winning production.

This is a reliable program that does what it's meant to but at the end of the day, DVD Flick is really only going to be useful to people without a multi-format DVD player.

Download DVD Flick 1.2.2.0 in Softonic

MooPlayer is a free, open-source media player for audio and video files with some interesting features.

To begin with, MooPlayer doesn't require installation: you only need to copy the app's files to your hard drive. Also, being open-source, anyone can develop plug-ins of their own in order to improve the player or add new functionalities to it.

MooPlayer supports the most popular formats both in audio and video. As for the latter, it can also display subtitles and lets you use zoom to play a video in double or half its original size.

On the downside, I personally found the program's interface design to be quite annoying. The arrangement of button and other controls is fine, but having a cartoon cow constantly flashing on the background is not my cup of tea.

MooPlayer can play both audio and video, supports subtitles, doesn't require installation and is open-source. Pity the interface doesn't go along with these nice features.

Download MooPlayer 1.3.0 in Softonic

Say you have an impressive collection of DVD movies. Say you just bought Microsoft Zune. Why not mixing both elements?

With Nidesoft DVD to Zune Converter you can easily rip your entire DVD video collection and save it into Zune's video format, so that you can enjoy your favorite movies on the move. The program includes several presets with different audio and video adjustments, which means you can choose your preferred size/quality proportion when ripping the video file. There are some sliders on the right side of the interface to manually customize audio and video quality but unfortunately these can't be saved as new presets. Nidesoft DVD to Zune Converter also enables you to extract the audio track of your DVD movies to AAC, MP3 or M4A formats.

The whole ripping process is quite simple. Just insert the DVD, select the most suitable preset and let the program do the job. Before actually starting to rip, you can preview the video in the app's embedded player.

Nidesoft DVD to Zune Converter lets you rip your DVD movies to watch them on the Zune player, although you'll need to adjust to the program's presets.

Download Nidesoft DVD to Zune Converter 3.1.12 in Softonic

If you’re a regular PC user and haven’t heard of DivX yet, then you’ve probably had your head in the sand for the past couple of years. It’s basically a highly compressed film format that turns the size of an average DVD from something like 5GB to just 700MB.

DivX for Windows is the official release from the DivX company, and offers everything you need to watch such films. The pack includes the all-important DivX Codec plus DivX Player, DivX Web Player and the Stage6 Content Uploader Utility for those who plan to rip and upload DVDs or other videos to the net. It also includes a 15-day trial of the DivX Converter and the DivX Pro Codec. All these components are free and include no adware although during the installation, you are offered the chance to install the Google toolbar.

The player itself is sleek and easy to use. It’s got all the standard functions of a DVD player plus the option of different skins from the DivX website. If you want to create your own DivX content, the converter allows the creation of video resolutions up to and including 1920 x 1080 High Definition in either interlaced or progressive-scan. It also supports advanced DVD features such as scene selection menus, subtitles and alternate audio tracks. It includes a download manager that allows you to download several videos at once, pause and resume downloads and playback video. Those that do their downloading of DivX films from P2P apps won’t use this much but others will find it more useful. The latest release of DivX Player also includes an uploader which enables you to easily publish media to the Stage6 media community website.

There’s little to criticise in DivX for Windows except for the converter. It can be particularly useful if you are trying to burn a downloaded DivX film onto a DVD to play on a standalone DVD player. Watching DivX files on your PC is usually not a problem but some people have issues when watching them on a standalone DVD Player. The converter solves this by taking any video file and producing a perfectly clean DivX film at the end of it. However, this feature is painfully slow and takes hours to complete just one film. Bearing in mind that you also have to pay for it after the 15-day trial period has expired, you’ll soon be looking for other converters to use such as BPS Video converter or VSO ConvertX.

Overall, this is an excellent DivX player and since it’s released by the official DivX company, you’ll have no worries about dodgy codecs ruining playback on your PC.

Download DivX For Windows 6.8 in Softonic

There can't be many people on this planet who have never watched a video or listened to a song on a computer. Chances are you've used one of the popular media players such as iTunes, Winamp or Windows Media Player, but have you ever stopped to think there might be some more interesting ways to play back movies or audio? If you're yearning for something a little bit different then you might find that XULPlayer fits the bill.

The application can play a wide range of different formats, whether it's audio, video, or even images. It's a little different to the rest of the bog-standard players out there and boasts a number of very interesting features. Besides all the normal playback functions, it includes several simple editing tools for changing the appearance, colour and rotating the image.

Another great concept incorporated into XULPlayer is the ability to have dual-video, allowing you to play two audio files or DVDs simultaneously and cross-fade them. It's a pretty slick interface and many of the useful features such as the subtitle options and video screenshotting are available with a single click of an icon. The app has a few little bugs that need ironing out but I'm sure in the upcoming updates these will be addressed.

Even now, XULPlayer provides a refreshingly unique alternative to those popular media players that have become household names.

Download XULPlayer 0.2.1.1 in Softonic

If you've ever needed to backup a DVD, then it can be quite a time consuming and complicated affair depending on what's on the disk. Easy DVD Clone backups your DVD's on another DVD or on your hard drive in just a few clicks. Your DVD backups can either be the complete disk with all the extras, or you can choose to backup just the main movie with selected audios and/or subtitles.

The most important thing to judge such a program on is the speed of the backup plus the video and audio quality of the final backup. The program supports backups DVD to DVD, DVD to Hard Drive, Hard Drive to DVD, Hard Drive to Hard Drive, and also allows you to burn existing DVD files to DVDR directly. I particularly liked the fact that you can shrink DVD's easily reducing 9GB DVDs onto a 4.7GB DVD without a big loss of image quality. Alternatively, you can split the content of a 9GB DVD onto two 4.7GB DVDs with absolutely no loss of quality. The program is also regularly updated so that the program can handle the latest codecs and compression ratios.

A powerful and easy to use program that makes DVD backups a breeze.

Download Easy DVD Clone 3.0.16 in Softonic

They say that if you really appreciate cinema you should watch only movies without dubbing, but if you don't master the original language you're probably going to miss a lot of the movie's plot. Now you can prevent this with SubEdit Player, a video player that includes a built-in text editor especially designed for subtitles.

This video editor can not only display subtitles along with the movie you're watching but also lets you meddle with the subtitles file in case there's a line that needs to be corrected. Other configuration options enable you to set the text font, size and color, change the way they're displayed or fine tune their synchronization with images.

SubEdit works with the most popular formats both for video and subtitles. It also includes a search tool to find and download subtitles from the Internet, although unfortunately we weren't able to make it work. The Help file wasn't very helpful either, as it's all in Polish.

Download SubEdit Player Build 4060 in Softonic