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

When it comes to P2P file sharing, eMule usually wins hands down but UseNeXT is an interesting, slightly more sophisticated offering which has a lot to offer.

For starters, depending on your connection, it can be remarkably quick. You can download at speeds of up to 25 Mbps with DSL/Cable and it¡s pretty constant rather than the fluctuations you often get with such services. The network also prides itself on security over it's rivals such as Limewire and eMule - with ISPs continually cracking down on users, UseNeXT promises users far more anonymity than most.

The Usenet archives are supposedly some of the biggest in the world - more than 300 Terabytes of data available at all times and they claim that around 2,000 Gigabytes of new files are added daily. The problem in the past was that UseNeXT used to be a very complicated affair that only tech geeks can handle. However, nowadays, it's been simplified to such an extent that eMule, Limewire and other P2P users will feel more than comfortable with it.

While it can't possibly hope to compete with the reach and depth of the major P2P networks, UseNeXT offers an impressive selection with some super fast downloads.

Download UseNeXT 4.81 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

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

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 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 BSPlayer Free 2.28.964 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

When you first encounter PPLive it seems like someone’s playing a sick joke on you. Upon first installing the application you’ll almost certainly be thinking this is the most annoying, pointless program you’ve ever seen and will be ruining the time you wasted downloading it. The reason for this being is that at first glance it just looks like a very poor media player and the entire interface is in Chinese.

These problems are made all the more frustrating by the riches promised by the program. The shareware app boasts to offer you the ability to watch free television from across the world on your PC, including live sport, live news, the latest episodes of top dramas and comedies, and a host of brand new movie blockbusters. The software integrates advanced peer-to-peer technology so it can provide the users with the smoothest TV programs with no interceptions, meaning every user becomes a broadcaster, saving the cost of traditional streaming media.

Not being fluent in the Eastern language and uninspired by the drab GUI we were all set to uninstall and even thought about removing the program from the Softonic site altogether to save you visitors from the worst ten minutes of your life. Then something happened – after stumbling across a site devoted to PPLive we realized that was a way around the frustration.

ESSENTIAL USER TIP: How to change the interface to English

By loading up the PPLive TV Engine and right-clicking on the fourth option from the bottom (the one that looks like a squiggle) you’re presented with the chance to change the interface into English. Hallelujah! Unfortunately, opening the Channel List menu gave us even more Chinese to try and decipher but luckily the Football4Less site contains the full list online, as does the PPLive site.

The list of streaming feeds is pretty comprehensive, and although many are in Chinese, it’s possible to dig around and find some great programs such as Desperate Housewives, English Premiership football games, American Idol, WWE wrestling, and a host of new films . Clicking on the link in the ‘Currently’ category on the listings page brings up the schedule of programs for that particular channel for the day, although many repeat the same show or movie all day. You can also search channels by category, such as sports, movies, news, cartoons, etc.

The task of finding western movies and shows is made all the more tricky by the Chinese-to-English translations of the programs, which can be a little baffling until you get used to it. To give you some clues to start with: Friends is known as ‘Six person of like’; Desperate Housewives becomes ‘Crazy Housewives’, and Brokeback Mountain is curiously known as ‘Breaks arm mountain.’

Clicking on a show will open your media player and begin playing the show or film from the start. You can choose to use the built-in media player (which is rather limited in features), or open in Windows Media Player or Real Player. The program uses P2P technology to share TV shows, so the more people are online the faster and more reliable the access will be, and we were pleasantly surprised by the speed in which most of the streams are buffered and the quality of the video. Unfortunately, like many P2P apps, the program turns out to be riddled with malware which installs itself in your temporary drive - so be warned!

Although it’s about as easy-to-use as a rubber saw, PPLive is certainly worth investing a bit of time and patience in if you want to watch TV for free online, and once you’ve figured it out it becomes a very addictive way to spend your time.

Download PPLive 1.9.21 in Softonic

It's great to have a portable multimedia device such as a PSP, an iPod or a Zune to watch movies on the go. The problem comes when you need to convert those videos from the PC to a suitable format so that you can watch those videos while commuting or traveling.

Koyote Free Video Converter can help you handle this issue in a very simple way. Far from complicated, bloated converting tools, this easy app lets you convert videos in a snap. You can choose between a wide range of formats, including those which are used in all popular portable devices. Available formats are presented as profiles with set preferences, but you can easily tweak them to suit your preferences.

Koyote Free Video Converter includes a small video window, but sadly it's only intended to watch video frames as the conversion process is working. It would have been nice to be able to use it also as video player to preview the contents of the movie before converting it.

With Koyote Free Video Converter you can easily convert videos to a variety of formats, including those suitable for portable devices.

Download Koyote Free Video Converter 1.2 in Softonic

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 1.0.1 in Softonic

Videora Converter claims to convert all your videos to play on your iPod without requiring any “technical know-how” on your part. The program’s process in itself is simple: search and select the desired file, click ’Convert’ and there you have it, ready to play on your iPod.

Despite its simplicity, Videora Converter suffers from a number of shortcomings. For one, the interface, particularly the main window, is riddled with horrible flashing pop-up ads. This makes using the wizard a fairly tedious process and one that you should skip altogether. We were also surprised by the very haphazard video settings. For the video format, you have a choice between “old” or “new”; for the video size “ipod” or “tv”, with no explanation as to what Videora considers the “tv” size to be. Setting quality levels for audio and video continues in the same foggy way: basic, medium, high or best are the only choices you're offered.

The quickest way to convert is under the Current Conversion tab. This interface is probably easier to use than the wizard. Select your file, the device you wish to convert it for and the profile you want to use. Videora has more than two-dozen preset encoded video formats to choose from. While you should find what you want in that list, it would have been good to let users tweak the settings according to their requirements. In terms of your video file library, Videora keeps your created output files in folders, divided according to the devices and video formats. You can also automatically add the converted files to iTunes.

If not for the bewildering interface and extremely vague video settings, Videora Converter could actually have been a very simple iPod converter. In the future, let’s hope Videora makes the wizard actually user friendly and gets rid of all the pop-ups.

Download Videora iPod Converter 3.06 in Softonic

Watch over 853 television channels all over the world with TeleStreamer. The application streams all online video content that TV channels make available on the web. For each country then, you'll probably get satellite channels rather than the national ones, but you still have a really large choice, with many news channels in nearly all the languages in the world. It’s also a good way to have a general idea about how TV formats are elsewhere; bear in mind though that maybe you will not have access to the most popular programs.

The GUI is very simple and clear. There is a list of nationalities with TV channels associated and you just have to double click on the one you want to watch. Not all the programs will work, but this may also depend on the availability of the content provider’s server. When you manage to connect to a channel though, the sound and the video quality are fairly good and you can either watch the program in windowed mode or, by double-clicking on it, enjoy the full screen mode.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to pause the stream, as the program doesn’t store data on your hard disk. It is a big limitation considering that it’s a very easy function to have on PCs and it’s the real plus in rapport to traditional broadcasted TV.

Although you can’t have any control when watching a program, TeleStreamer allows you to watch 853 channels all over the world, both to practice your language skills and to see what’s going on in Africa, Iraq or Suriname, if you know where that is.

Download Tele-Streamer 1.0 in Softonic

As the world of P2P TV continues its expansion, new kid on the block is TV Ants. The increasing unreliability of its Chinese cousin PPLive means that increasing numbers of users are changing to this simple but highly effective alternative.

The installation is fortunately pretty simple as everything is in Japanese – it’s simply a case of clicking on “Ok” a few times and away you go. The channel list appears in a simple window and you can reveal more by clicking “Renew”. The channel list is a bizarre mix of Japanese, public and private channels. If you want to find out how American troops keep up their morale in Iraq, check out “TV Pentagon” (the US army’s official channel) or if you’re looking for something a bit more scenic, there’s “TV Canada Tourism”.

Streaming is steady once it gets going and image quality is as good as anything you’ll get on PPLive. There are literally hundreds of channels to choose from although most are obviously of little interest to English viewers. The program is actually a project of Zhejiang University hence the plethora of mainly Asian channels. Its popularity lies in the fact that like most P2P TV apps, the channels broadcast live European football much to the chagrin of the The Premiership, La Liga, Sky Sports,etc.

Other channels include music, movies, news and fashion, mostly from Asian sources. Most of this can be found on Shanghai TV, Gungdong TV and Goal TV. Schedules can be found on various P2P forums around the net such as Free Football and you’ll certainly need them to get the most out of TV Ants.

Download TvAnts 1.0.0.59.0834 in Softonic

ChrisTV Online! is software for Windows which brings to your desktop a large number of TV channels, radio channels and other kinds of video/audio content broadcasted on the Internet (like music video clips, movie trailers, public webcams, etc) using only your Internet connection and no other dedicated hardware. Having a channels' database with 800+ TV channels and 600+ radio stations from more than 100 countries, ChrisTV Online! provides you access to those channels and more than that a professional user friendly interface to watch and listen high quality video/audio content from the Internet.

The channels database is updated on a daily basis, so you'll benefit of an increased number of updated channels' streams every time without any effort. An outstanding feature of ChrisTV Online!, which you will not find in a similar software product, is the frame display mode which lets you watch video played content in a custom or predefined size frame window. This frame video window can be dragged in any place of your desktop and in combination with 'Always on Top' feature gives you the option to work on your computer and watch your favorite show in one corner of the screen.

The ChrisTV Online! interface offers you fast and easy access to all channels available in our database through the Channels List panel, where you can Group channels by Country, Type, Category, Language, Station Name. To gain fast access to your favorite TV channel or Radio station, you can add them to ChrisTV Online! Favorites List, which provides the same grouping feature as with the Channels List.

Download ChrisTV Online! 2.99 in Softonic

Most of my friends are replacing their old CTR television sets with brand-new flat screens, but I don't think I'll follow the trend. After all, I can also watch TV on my computer with Online Media.

This simple tool lets you tune in to about 2,000 TV channels and 1,500 radio stations, all streaming content on the Internet. They're all classified by countries and can be conveniently selected by using the tree-like structure on the left pane of the program's interface. A double click on the channel's name is enough to start watching or listening. There's also a bookmark system that lets you easily store your favorite TV and radio channels.

Be aware though that the program is far from being perfect. Many channels simply don't work and some others have such a low speed transference that you get a series of fixed frames in a slideshow instead of real video. However, given the large amount of channels available, you may still find some good content – and what's more important, be able to watch it.

Online Media features a really impressive collection of TV channels and radio stations but unfortunately not all of them seem to work.

Download Online Media 1.0.1 in Softonic