Two awsome video players!

Heh, I'm one of those guys who's never really adapted myself to VideoLAN's VLC Player, when it comes to watching video files. The built-in multi-purpose decoder/renderer seemed a bit on the edge. I can't say I notice any changes in quality watching i.e. an XviD file with the regular codec from watching it with the VLC package. But still, it's just a feeling, that it's just not the right way of doing it.

However, a couple of months ago I was irritated by a YouTube-ripped clip not being played in my default video player, which used to be the not-so-known Crystal Player (making sure that I always have the latest codecs). Then, I trying playing it through VLC, and everything went well. After that moment, I hang on to the VLC player. Then, I played around with some transcoding software, being interested in this - reasonable new - Matroska (.MKV) file format. From what I've heard, it's principally made for high resolution video. Anyways, a colleague told me that VLC used a really shitty renderer for high resolution video, in particular regarding Matroska. He gave me a tip about another free player called Zoom Player, not being shipped with built-in codecs, but a feature that at the first time the player being run, offering to download the required codecs, where it's designed to choose well-performed optimized(?) packages. Neat, huh.

I downloaded the player and tried it the very same day. Besides from a GUI design that I thought to be a bit shady, it worked well. Anyways. Now, I suddenly feel more familiar with modern codecs and splitters, so I no longer feel the need for that this Kindergarten player that makes most of my choices.

So, what's out there? It was actually way back in the day I first heard about MPC, but unfortunaly I didn't take the time investigating this player. Really sad, 'cuz it's the bomb. So compact, so neat. The native features that a media player needs, with it's core taken from the Media Player 6.4.x (Windows / mplayer2.exe).


This is a great player, that as of yesterday changed all default file associations for video files to. For this, I use ffdshow for a codec filter. No longer a need to stay updated on several codecs. This is a great all-in-one solution which I feel that I should have discovered ages ago.

Another option? In one point of view, this one is almost more interesting. It's a Windows graphical interface for the MPLAYER (UNIX/Linux). It works great and has an own set of built-in DirectShow filter that doesn't seem to have a problem with just about any video file. Awsome! A big plus is that this is really just a GUI / Windows front-end; which of course makes the package include the core command-line player, which may come in handy for more than one purpose. If not other, it feels so g33k to use command-line software ;)

Related links
ffdshow.info/
mpui.sourceforge.net/
sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/