If you are too frustrated with Windows Media Player with regard to video playback, you might be looking for a good alternative. Following are some best and free alternatives to windows media player:
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Winamp Media Player
Winamp is the best and most popular free alternative to windows media player that can play audio and video. I hope you already know what are its features!
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VLC Media Player
Another best alternative to windows media player based on open-source multimedia framework. VLC is a powerful media player, playing most of the media codecs and video formats out there. It can handle DVDs, (S)VCDs, Audio CDs, web streams, TV cards and much more.
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DivX Plus Player
DivX Plus Player is another popular one built to give you the best video playback performance and media management on your PC. It can play DivX, AVI, MKV, MP4 and MOV videos. Other features include easier navigation of videos with greater speed and precision, transferring videos to your devices etc.
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Media Player Classic Home Cinema
Media Player Classic Home Cinema is an extremely light-weight media player for Windows. It looks just like Windows Media Player v6.4, but has many additional features. You can use the player as a Media Player Classic Home Theater.
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KMPlayer
Another hassle-free media player which you can use if you are not satisfied with the above three. KMPlayer handles both audio and video, and supports a wide range of different formats. There are all sorts of options to help you pimp and customize KMPlayer, such as visualizations, plug-ins and playback options.
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Kantaris Media Player
Free and open source media player that plays almost all multimedia formats without the need for installing any separate codecs. It also plays RAR-archives without first extracting the media.
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GOM Media Player
GOM Player includes many codecs (XviD, DivX, FLV1, AC3, OGG, MP4, H263 and more) so you won’t need to install separate codecs for most videos. For those videos that require a separate codec, GOM Player will find one and direct you to a place where you can download an open source version of the codec. Also supports screen capture which allows you to take a screenshot of your video directly from the Player.
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XBMC Media Player
XBMC is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. XBMC is available for Linux, OSX, Windows, and the original Xbox. XBMC can be used to play almost all popular audio and video formats around.
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MediaPortal
MediaPortal turns your PC and TV into a very advanced home media center. It allows you to listen to your favorite music and radio stations; watch and store your videos and DVDs; view, schedule and record live TV as a digital video recorder; and much, much more. MediaPortal is open source software.
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MPlayer Movie Player
MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems (see the documentation). It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5, WMV and even H.264 movies.
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All the above are worth trying if you have trouble with Windows Media Player. Are you currently using any one of the above freeware for video playback?
Anand Srivastava is an entrepreneur, internet marketing expert and a technocrat.
You can reach him at anand@tipsblogger.com
