Thread: Media players

Most users prefer to use a different software for viewing music and video. The default for both in modern windows systems is Windows Media Player. Windows Media Player takes unusually long to open files, is slow to respond, buggy when handling large files and can handle a very limited number of codecs to start with. VLC, one installed, would be godsend to many, simply because users were able to play videos encoded using obscure codecs. K-lite mega codec pack, along with Windows Media Player classic should do the trick now. Media Player Classic handles QuickTime and real player formats. The latter better than the latest version of VLC. It is fast, simple, and minimalist, a design philosophy that VLC seems to have drifted away from. The older version of VLC, 0.7.0, can still handle most videos, and is a 5 MB install.

Audio players are more complicated. Win amp has become the de facto due to the wide range of skins available, and for being around for such a long time. However, the latest version of the player forces a lot of features on you. The media library, for example, is a constant irritant. There is no way to get rid of it, unless you choose the classic skin. The newer skins are also heavy on resources. Feature bloat was a problem ever since version 5.0 came out, which was a long time after 3.0, and skipping everything 4.x, because that is how much Winamp had changed. Not everyone welcomed the change, and a lot of tech enthusiasts prefer the older version of Win amp. Typically, they use whatever 2.x series is available to them. 2.95 is the last version in the 2.x series, but an interesting release was the 2.666 version, which enthusiasts prefer merely for the connotations in the version number. 3.0 was another release, the only one in the short lived 3.x series. A lot of users swear by the 3.0 version also, a suitable compromise between the simplicity of the earlier versions, and the feature set in the later versions. However, finding skins for 3.0 is a difficult thing now, and it does not support 2x skins.

An alternative to Winamp, and another media player which has its own fan following among techies is Foobar2000. This software is small, functional, and the tweaker's dream as it can be customised in a hundred different ways. Foobar2000 is one of the few software that has struck the right balance between default features and plug-ins. There are many plug-ins available, but these are not overwhelming in number and are for highly specific features.