Anyone use anything other then Windows Media Player?

[LordJezo]

Just wondering if there is anything better out there to watch movies and other media files with...

 

[dman]

Nothing that does them all, but, REAL Player and QTIME are the competitors. Then there are players for individual formats, like XING for MPEG. Some players are available but they are more of a frontend to the decoding software built in to windows.

 

[greenfirs]

You need Real Player to watch Real encoded movies. You need Quicktime to watch Sorenson encoded quicktime movies. These two companies will not allow their codecs to interoperate with other players, forcing you to download their bloatware if you want to watch movies in those formats.

As for other movies in open formats (avi, non-Sorenson mov, mpeg, DivX, etc) there are a whole bunch of players that you can use, Media Player just being one of many. But since Media Player is already there, and it works fine, why bother with anything else.

There are also a whole bunch of other rare formats, for which you need codecs or specialized players. For the long-gone-but-not-quite-forgotten Vivo format, I recommend VivTV which is currently in version 4. You can download a codec to enable Windows Media Player to play .m2v (Mpeg 2) movies. And so it goes.

 

[ShadowHunter]

Most people here use Winamp for the MP3s. I just use WMP for everything.

I'm sure some anti-Microsoft zealots out there killed WMP and use something else like Real Player or Quicktime.

 

[veryape]

Well, I have Real Player, Media Player and Quicktime installed because at times there are some programs that will only use one or the other. That kind of sucks but until there is truly a universal player it seems that is what I will continue to have to do.

Oh, almost forgot. Yes I also have Winamp 2.71 installed and I do use it whenever possible but when it comes to video you need all the other ones installed to play their particular stuff.

 

[LordJezo]

Well, what I meant was the open formats.. DIVX, mpg, avi.. those sorts of things.. is WMA as good as the rest?

 

[SpecialEd]

yeah... i use all three of those programs as well... I hate Real Player... I went three months without needing it... but then I broke down and installed it. I feel like tries to take over all the media features on my computer. I wish video formats would get some unity.

 

[gariig]

there's gdivx, which is what i use except for Qtime and Realplayer for said video formats...Gdivx is nice and compact, and no extra niceties the WMP has.

Gariig

 

[BigJohnKC]

I'm wondering what is the lightest weight divx player out there - WMP skips all the time when playing on my old pII 266, and even the included player (The Playa) with the divx codec is a bot bloated - skips a bit. Is there a really light weight divx player out there that will play smoothly on an old pos computer?

 

[Magicthyse]

I use RealJukebox Plus.

I really like the user interface - which is the reason I paid for the damned thing - and it's the only reason I put up with it's very intrusive operation. I can't believe the info that it uploads to Real... Mind you, it's not as bad as TiVo, which even sends details about the time and duration of the remote keypresses down the line.

Actually, I was pissed off that after I paid for the software, I had to pay again to upgrade the CD writing module to over 2x...

But anyway, I like it - and it won't cost anything to just listen to material. It will cost to be able to encode high quality MP3's and to get rid of the ads.

EDIT: Oops, sorry - I thought you were talking about music. I use WMP to play video.

 

[greenfirs]

<< pII 266 >>



bwahahaha

 

[ApacheXMD]

Sasami

-patchy

 

[nateholtrop]

The Playa for my divx movies.

nate