Features

These days, it's an app that attempts to be all things to all people - play DVDs, organize music, catalog photos, convert video, interact with social networking sites, browse internet multimedia....there's no end to what RealPlayer offers to its users. Even so, it's not an out-and-out success...

Usability

For a start, installation of RealPlayer is annoying - it takes a while, requires lots of "nexts" and tries to install and enable several features that users don't really need. Finally, when it starts, you're offered a chance to upgrade to paid versions of RealPlayer 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 features a wide interface where you will notice ads and videos recommended by Real Networks. This looks cluttered and messy, and it's hard to know what the app actually offers. In reality, RealPlayer 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, although this is available as a feature if you upgrade to RealPlayer Plus.

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. Downloading internet videos is faster, and for those of you with something to hide, RealPlayer offers a new Private folder. Social media has also been bumped up, with direct access to Facebook videos and usefully, a built-in feature to transfer videos to your mobile devices.

Quality

That said, RealPlayer 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. The sheer quality of some of the media only available in Real formats makes RealPlayer an essential item in the toolkit of any fan of internet video and audio.

Conclusion

There's no shortage of media players theses days, and RealPlayer is by no means a bad option. It offers lots of features, good options and is a high-quality player that will do justice to your media. The only problem is that despite its modern features, it feels like a bit of a dinosaur. It's heavy and slow, looks chunky and takes an age to respond to clicks, and for many people - especially those who have experience of lighter options - it's just not the most comfortable player.

RealPlayer is a media player that, although powerful, has suffered from serious feature-creep over the years.

Download RealPlayer 16.0.2.232 in Softonic

Manage and playback your music collection with integration into iTunes. Intelligently sorts out your into an orgranized playlist on loading. Supports an easy to use interface Black Omega allows you to quickly load, sort and play your music in a few clicks. Supports m3u, pls and xspf playlist formats. Play hi-res and surround sound FLAC files bit perfectly. Support modern surround sound speaker setup. Simultaneous stereo playback through front, surround and rear left and right speakers. Employs the best mixing and resampling algorithms as required so that any audio file can be played on any sound hardware. Uses ID3 tags and other track metadata to sort and display contents.

Each audio pathway from decoding of the file to delivery to the sound card or DAC has been perfected over 14 years. The player uses codecs specifically developed in-house for Black Omega in order decode the various audio formats. By using the ASIO sound drivers the music is delivered directly to the speaker channels without alteration by the Operating system. Employing multi-channel speaker setups Black Omega is unique in that it is the only ASIO player to do this.

Black Omega has been engineered specifically to deliver the very best in sound reproduction. It is for audiophiles, those who love their audio systems and music listening experience.

Download Black Omega 2.1.1 in Softonic

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.

Download VLC media player nightly 2.1.0 64-Bit in Softonic

StaxRip allows you to easily convert your DVD's, DVB or DV captures, or almost any other source format. As a open source application StaxRip is completely free. The program supports the most popular video formats (DivX, XviD, x264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4), audio formats (MP3, AC3, MP2/MPA, AAC, DTS, WAV) and container formats (AVI, MP4, MPG, MKV, DivX).

Features of StaxRip:

• No spyware, adware or any other form of malware
• No registry bloat, settings are saved in files within the application's directory
• No lost settings after a fresh windows installation
• No awkward setup/installer, no system changes, system bloat and trash
• Easy to use and highly customizable
• Reasonable default values for filters, codecs etc.
• Rich help system including, online help, context sensitive help and forum support
• Rich and convenient cutting facilities e.g. to remove ads
• Batch processing (jobs)
• Rich feature set to manage, integrate and download required third party application
• AviSynth powered to achieve excellent video quality and support of virtually any source format

Download StaxRip 1.1.1.0 in Softonic