Windows XP and Vista comes pre-installed with Windows Media Player (WMP) which lack many popular codecs for audio and video, and is also a resource hog. Fortunately, there are options available which use little system memory, have decent user interface and most importantly supports all video and audio formats and codecs.
If you are adamant on using WMP only, you can download and install individual codecs such as DivX, Xvid and Quicktime and then play such encoded videos in WMP or in the respective codec’s own media player such as DivX Player or Quicktime Player. But that would still leave your system incapable of playing many video codecs.
In such cases you might be tempted to use multi codec packs such as K-Lite Codec Pack. But be warned! Such codec packs will litter your windows installation with lots of unnecessary files and conflicting versions of codecs which can bring Windows or a few applications crashing down.
A better alternative is to install one of the ‘play it all’ media players which can play just about any video codec you throw at it. We suggest you use VLC Player or KMPlayer as “one-stop solutions for all your video codec woes”.
One of the most popular and recommended WMP alternative is VideoLan’s VLC Player, also known as the “Swiss Army knife of media applications”
Key features about VLC Media Player
- Cross Platform Compatibility – VLC works with all operating systems, which include Windows, Mac OS & Linux.
- Inbuilt codecs – VLC does not require individual codecs to playback multimedia files, as it uses it’s internal codecs.
VLC supports all codecs and all file formats supported by FFmpeg such as MPEG-1/2, MPEG-4, DivX, XviD, Quicktime, Cinepak, WMV, Indeo. The only codec which VLC does not support completely is RealMedia.
It supports video containers such as AVI, Quicktime, ASF, 3GP, MPEG, WMV, FLV and many more. - It can play the video content of incomplete, unfinished, or damaged video downloads before the files have been fully downloaded.
- It can also be used as a streaming server, with extended features (video on demand, on the fly transcoding, etc)
- Skins – VLC also supports skins to customise its look & feel. You can even make VLC look like WMP.
Till now one of the major gripes about VLC was its interface. But with the latest release of VLC Player 0.9.2, VideoLan has to quite an extent improved upon that.
- The KMPlayer is unique in terms of the video codecs it uses. It has internal codecs to play most kinds of video files out of the box and it also supports external DirectShow based codecs installed in Windows!
- Like VLC, KMPlayer also supports almost all the codecs and containers except for Quicktime and RealMedia. You still need to install Real Player and QuickTime Player (or their Alternative codecs)
- It can also play incomplete or damaged AVI files or locked media files while downloading.
- It allows users to capture audio, video, and screenshots in many ways.
- The configuration options available in KMPlayer are extremely extensive, so much that they can intimidate a novice. But if you need advanced options, then this one beats VLC alright.
- KMPlayer also scores over VLC as far as its UI is concerned. Plus its interface is also skinnable.
Honourable Mentions:
GOM Player is also a capable free media player for Windows which can play most media files with its own internal codecs. If however you come across a file it cannot play, it will direct you to the appropriate open-source codec to install. It can also play broken media files similar to VLC or the KMPlayer.
However, it doesn’t really have anything extra to provide over and above VLC Player and KMPlayer.
MPlayer is basically a command-line media player which does not contain any GUI for Windows. Hence, on Windows, it has to be used in conjunction with a GUI front end such as MPUI or SMPlayer. This makes it very complicated for an average user to use it on Windows. Like VLC, it is also based on the libavcodec library of the FFmpeg project and supports most video codecs out of the box.
MPC looks like the old Windows Media Player v6.4, but that’s where the similarity ends. Under the hood, this program packs a lot of features for viewing various encoded videos.
However, MPC does not have any internal codecs to support video files out of the box. It depends completely on DirectShow architecture to use windows installed codecs to play most of the video formats. So you still need to install individual codecs; the only benefit is that you can have a single user interface to play all the videos. This is a major differentiating factor between MPC and the remaining all-in-one media players listed above.
Media Player Classic – Home Cinema is now being developed based on the original MPC after its development came to a halt.
Suggested Reading:
Comparison of Media Players on Wikipedia
