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.

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Organize, manage and download your RSS and PodCast. Noopod is an ITunes alternative to manage your podcasts. It has many interesting features that you will like:

Manage all your news and podcasts and find it quickly

• PodCast playing in streaming with VLC Media Player, play all podcasts file without QuickTime or another codec
• Noopod use RSS-one Directory to have a lot of RSS and podcast.
• Show your podcast and RSS from your desktop with the Noodock
• Real time notif when you new news is available
• Podcast download manager

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It's considered to be a must have free video player. It can play any type of video including 192 video codec and 85 audio coded - like VLC player, but with a nicer interface. It is also supposed to optimize CPU usage and use as few resources as possible. The package contains optimized builds for Pentiums, Athalons and Dual Core processors. You just select the one suitable for you during the installation process.

The package installs both MPlayer 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. You also have many options to deinterlace, denoise and apply filters to improve the video rendering.

I've noticed minor usability issues: when you stop the video for example, the pointer in the status bar should restart from the beginning, whereas with this player it just stays at the point of the film you stopped it, making no difference with the pause function. Also the program doesn't remember the volume of the sound when you close and re-open the application.

MPlayer supports 192 video codec and also video streaming, QuickTime and RealAudio files making it the perfect choice if you don't want to mess around with a different player for each video format.

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This open source multimedia player allows you to watch films by just dragging and dropping the file on the video screen. It claims to support so many codecs that you’ll no longer need to download them. According to our test, though, this is not so true.

The interface is very elegant and the option for scrolling through the film has a pleasant, immediate response. It surely supports many different formats but in our test it didn’t work with DivX files while other competitors like Media Player Classic or VLC media player did. Also, when you open Cineplay for the first time, it tells you that an update is available and asks you whether you want to update the program, but if you click yes, you’ll just get a “404: Page not found” screen. A bit disappointing as a start.

A good option if you want a multi-format reader which is very fast to run and with a minimalist-elegant interface, remembering though that there are less stylish solutions which support a wider range of video formats.

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My favourite media player has always been VLC but I have to say, FF Player gives it a run for it's money. It plays all kinds of audio and video files quickly and with stability. It isn't packed with advanced features but as long as you've got DirectX codecs installed, it plays a remarkably wide range of formats.

To use it, you simply drag and drop the files you want to play into the playlist. Both the playlist and the video screen can be dragged to the size you want with an attractive slider. The overall feel of the player is very sleek although unfortunately, there are no extra skins that you can add to it.

A super simple little player that can handle almost anything and won't let you down.

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Anything that has something in common with VLC player is OK by me and SmoothTube uses the same codec libraries as Videolan's VLC player so I knew it was going to be a pretty effective application. The developers claim that it works as a front-end program to VLC's transcoding options, requiring no knowledge of their syntax or inner workings. However, if you're not a VLC Player fan, the good news is that you don't need VLC player installed to use SmoothTube.

That said, Visual Basic 6 and a full installation of VLC are required to build the source both of which are available on the developer site. In a nutshell, SmoothTube downloads videos from the Internet in the quality of your choosing - high, medium or low. All videos are stored automatically in the "My Videos" folder and are saved in MPEG format since this is recognised by the widest number of media players. One other nice little feature is that it is also able to smooth out some of the compression problems associated with downloaded videos which increases the quality of the download considerably.

This is a simple tool that gives you the unique option of choosing in what quality you want to download a clip. It's just a shame that it does not save in other formats too.

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Some players come loaded with too many features and too many codecs - not MPCStar. MPCStar is a universal video player that can play most formats of films downloaded from the internet. MPCStar has been developed using open source libraries, so it's highly customisable if you have any programming knowledge. One of the best features however is a pop-up blocker which prevents pop-ups appearing that sometimes come loaded with films.

To ensure smooth playback and not get weighed down with too many codecs, MPCStar contains only the major codecs including Media Player Classic, FFDshow Codec Pack,
RealPlayer Codecs, ActiveX controls, QuickTime Codecs and DirectVobSub (a.k.a. VSFilter). The only problem is that these codecs are regularly updated and there appears to be no automatic update function but overall, this is one of the simplest and most powerful players I've tried since VLC player.

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