What Media Player do you use to watch downloaded videos?

[Kid Ryan]

I use Media Player Classic - Home Cinema.

All I have to do to make it play all formats/types etc is to install a Codec Pack like CCCP or K-Lite.

[Koby]

I use the only ones worth recommending or talking about. Media Player Classic - Home Cinema which is bundled within the Combined Community Codec Pack. It's leagues better than any other codec pack. Only one that comes close is K-Lite but even it is crap compared to CCCP.

ALLPlayer (Acceptable Player)

A mess of half translated strings, weird file installation and nonsensical 'features' (would you like to slow down the display of your external .srt files?) means this player gets a 'Acceptable Player' report. It's also ugly. Nearly sinfully ugly.

Homepage: http://www.marbit.com.pl/

ALShow (Bad/Evil)

Refuses to use VSFilter even when it's internal caption filter is turned off. Have to autoload VSFilter for softsubs to display. Only allows usage of overlay mixer and no other renderers. Prioritizes mpeg layer 3 decoder for mp3 over ffdshow. Refuses to use Haali's splitter to split mp4's and doesn't have an internal splitter. Uses an internal Ogg splitter instead of Haali's splitter. Couple all of that with an ugly looking player and you get a Bad/Evil.

BSPlayer (Bad/Evil)

BSPlayer has an almost uncountable number of bugs in it, the short answer is that almost all playback is broken, the long answer, including the (rather long) way to get it working, is here.

Homepage: http://www.bsplayer.org/

Coreplayer (Acceptable Player)

Another standalone player, this one brought to you by the CoreCodec group. Currently only supports using internal filters, and it lacks a subtitle renderer, AND it has almost no options. Not currently recommended.

Homepage: http://coreplayer.com

Crystal Player (Acceptable Player)

Unable to get it to load VSFilter at all. It has several internal filters / splitters that the details of which are unknown, and a bunch of suspicious built-in postprocessing modes. Additionally, we suspect that it forces one of the VMR modes and doesn't allow the Overlay Mixer to be used. Suggestion is not to use it.

Homepage: http://www.crystalplayer.com/

DivX Player 6.3 (Acceptable Player)

You should be able to play most MKV, OGM, and MP4 releases in the DivX Player without issues. Tested as far as working softsubs and switching audio/sub tracks. However it still seems to not fully be a DirectShow player, whereas almost every other Windows player is. You cannot do simple things like play audio files, or files which it thinks are not media but you may in fact have DirectShow filters for. So long as the player thinks the file has video though it will play it. Ogg Theora worked for example, but Ogg Vorbis did not. Still extremely not recommended for use.

Homepage: http://www.divx.com/

Drastic Preview (Bad/Evil)

DO NOT INSTALL THIS. It changed all my image and audio formats to type 'drasticpreview', which removes their icons, replacing them with the default windows .dll icon. Uninstalling did not fix it.

FFPlayer (Bad/Evil)

Doesn't work with vsfilter (crashes out if you set haali's to autoload). Defaults to VMR9 RGB output, doesn't support Haali's renderer, strange keymapping. Don't bother.

GOM Player (Bad/Evil)

GOM can open the four main video formats (avi, ogm, mp4, mkv) as well as windows media and real formats. Unfortunately, the included splitters are on the bad side of terrible. ASSA subtitles display unstyled. Lack of Haali loading is the downfall of this player – will only work (without some serious tweaking) with hardsubbed files. Not compatible with CoreAVC in a default install with inbuilt codecs disabled.

Homepage: http://www.gomplayer.com/

JetAudio Player (Acceptable Player)

Works fine as long as you let it use it's own subtitle filter. The output mode is set to 'system default' instead of 'overlay mixer' too which can cause troubles.

The KMPlayer (Acceptable Player)

Fails on several things like advanced subtitle effects (styles, positioning, etc), seeking with asf/wmv files (can cause blocking), mkv splitting in several cases (when it plays with three video windows it is quite spectacular though), and probably a lot more. Also various evil components were sighted within the program directory, which may or may not cause huge drama, though seemingly they will only get used at user preference, except for some outdated and slightly broken Gabest filters on which this player seems to rely a lot. Furthermore, it has a tendency to load random files starting with "a" from the same directory if you open "a.mkv" for example, which can result in some rather funny scenarios too (unless you manually turn off the loading of any additional files completely).

Trying to install without all the included stuff will result in a neat Korean interface. Language files seem to be hidden under "KMPlayer Extender File" (description says "Files for video/audio effects."), which also gives you a near 15 MB bonus in install size.

Light Alloy Player (Acceptable Player)

We haven't had much experience with this yet, but as far as preliminary tests go, it doesn't seem broken in any important area, with the exception that it loads and unloads lots of DirectShow filters on playback start, behavior similar to BSPlayer with "Advanced Graph Building". More testing is needed.

Homepage: http://www.softella.com/

Media Player Classic (Good Player)

This is the now-abandoned progenitor of MPC-HC, described below. It looks almost identical but is no longer updated and not no longer recommended.

Homepage: http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/

Media Player Classic Home Cinema (Included with CCCP)

***Included with CCCP***

A continuation of the MPC project. The single included player with the CCCP, the included version should work flawlessly.

See Media Player Classic Home Cinema for more info.

Homepage: http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/

MPlayer (Good Player)

Not much to say about it really, it can do almost everything the CCCP can, plus a lot of other things the CCCP can't. The only real problem is that it's rather obscure and not really user-friendly.

Homepage: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/

QuickTime (Bad/Evil)

QuickTime will not play back any avi/ogm/mkv files. It will play back a limited selection of mp4 and 3gp files, namely those with either baseline or main profile AVC, or simple profile MPEG-4 video. It also includes support for AAC audio.

Homepage: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

RadLight 4 (Bad/Evil)

Includes it's own graph building/filter selection technology. Appears to include support only for AVI and MKV. Movies with subtitles do not load. Possibly fixable with intense work.

Homepage: http://www.radlight.net/

RealPlayer 10 (Bad/Evil)

Will not play back OGM/MKV files. MP4 playback is unknown, but it is expected that there would be no troubles.

Homepage: http://www.real.com/

The Core Media Player (TCMP) (Acceptable Player)

Uses very old and outdated filters and its built-in subtitle / audio track switching buttons won't work.

Homepage: http://www.tcmp.org/

VLC media player (Bad/Evil)

VLC is weird or evil in many ways. We recommend avoiding it and its strange conventions/capabilities.

Homepage: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

ViPlay (2) (Acceptable Player)

Seems ok, but does not catch the correct AR in anamorphic videos.

ViPlay 3 (Acceptable Player)

Appears to play files without trouble, as long as the graph building style is changed from ViPlay's to Microsoft's.

Homepage: http://www.urusoft.net/home.php?lang=1

Winamp 5 (Acceptable Player)

Will play most files with a moderate amount of tweaking. Requires manual loading of subtitles filter for subtitles, but uses Haali splitter/ffdshow correctly.

Homepage: http://www.winamp.com/

Windows Media Player 10 (Acceptable Player)

Will play back most files with no problems, but seems to bork on some for unknown reasons. Some anamorphic video are played at the wrong resolution.

Windows Media Player 11 (Acceptable Player)

Likely to have slightly less issues then WMP10, however some problems are still prevalent. In particular, the AR is detected wrongly (ie, not at all) in some MKV files.

Xenorate Media Player (Acceptable Player)

VSFilter is always loaded during any playback, and VSFilter is always set to 'Hide Subtitles' on loading. You must manually click on the VobSub icon in system tray and select 'Show Subtitles' for anything with subtitles. Finally the player seems to have internal audio downmixing/upmixing options, which may need to be changed depending on your speaker setup.

Homepage: http://www.xenorate.com/

Zoom Player (Acceptable Player)

Currently there's no free version of Zoom Player available, and no plans to release one, nor plans for a maintenance release of v5 standard edition, despite reported instability under Windows Vista SP1.

Homepage: http://www.inmatrix.com/zplayer/

SubEdit-Player (Acceptable Player)

DirectShow based player with build in subtitle editor. Has multiple monitor support and nice subtitle display options when using internal sub display.

Homepage: http://matinf.pcz.pl/~subedit/english/information.html

[SenSei]

As I said in this thread : video player

I use KM Player only...

[NTK]

Can you change the position of the subs on MPC? Also do the subtitles have a nice font?

O.T. I use GOM and VLC in that order, they're both very evil. (So am I, bwahahahahahahah)

[† poetictragedy]

I use VLC player, and it works fine for me.

[Oblivia]

Lol poetictragedy, you are using

weird or evil in many ways

[† poetictragedy]

Well, it's not "weird or evil" to me. I'll believe it when I see it.

[Oblivia]

I know, it is just that the description was really funny to me. Lol, great explanation... And I have no complaints about the player I use too, for now.

[Koby]

Can you change the position of the subs on MPC? Also do the subtitles have a nice font?

O.T. I use GOM and VLC in that order, they're both very evil. (So am I, bwahahahahahahah)

In MPC the subs appear exactly as they were coded/designed/ or typeset to be.

MPC is like the Firefox of media players and almost all others are Internet Explorer.

[NTK]

In MPC the subs appear exactly as they were coded/designed/ or typeset to be.

MPC is like the Firefox of media players and almost all others are Internet Explorer.

[Daviddaman91]

VLC is win for macs

[Renzourin]

i use VLC for a lot of lowerlevel stuff for ease of use (i find it easy to use surprisingly) but i use the home cinema for HQ level stuff since VLC tends to pixelate in that situation especially above 480p at 720 it doesnt even keep up with the video before that i can watch but i cant skip around without the picture turning to crap for a few seconds

[Koby]

I guess I'll give it a shot. It just annoys me when I can't move the subs onto the black stripe underneath the movie,so that's my criteria. And it's nice when the letters are nicely rendered and clearly readable.

Black stripe underneath? Only way a black stripe exists is if you grabbed someones encode who sucks at encoding and failed to crop the video, or if some shitty player messes with it and adds one. I don't have any videos with black borders.

VLC is win for macs

No it's not. It's just as bad as it is on the PC.

For MAC's you should use Mplayer extended.

i use VLC for a lot of lowerlevel stuff for ease of use (i find it easy to use surprisingly) but i use the home cinema for HQ level stuff since VLC tends to pixelate in that situation especially above 480p at 720 it doesnt even keep up with the video before that i can watch but i cant skip around without the picture turning to crap for a few seconds

Why not use MPC-HC for everything? It's a really simple and compact player.

[Daviddaman91]

No it's not. It's just as bad as it is on the PC.

For MAC's you should use Mplayer extended.

Hmm. I've never heard of it. But I will give it a shot. Thanks I'm always open to finding better programs

[blueythedog]

I use vlc it is very good

[Revan]

MPC-HC...never want to turn back now

[Nellio]

I always try to use VLC, it's the only one that seems to happily play all of my videos. But I like to convert those files so I can watch them on my Xbox 360's...so...do those count as media players? lol

[NTK]

Black stripe underneath? Only way a black stripe exists is if you grabbed someones encode who sucks at encoding and failed to crop the video, or if some shitty player messes with it and adds one. I don't have any videos with black borders.

I mean when you go fullscreen, there are black crops over and under the video. (or left and right on 4:3 format). I like the subs to be on them, and not on the video.

[Ulukia]

I find that KMPlayer supports almost all formats I encounter, if it has issues I load up SMPlayer. Last resort is VLC.

[Iyashii]

Just using Media Player Classic.

Haven't run into any problems with it, so no reason to change.