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One important piece of software essential to any computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) is a video player.  There are many good, free, available programs out there, yet many users shy away from some that they haven’t heard of before.  Within this post, I’m going to take a look at five different programs and some key features about each.

Windows Media Player

Developed by Microsoft, Windows Media Player is available on all PCs, pocket PCs, Windows Mobile cell phones, and it was even developed for Mac, but that development has since ended.  Windows Media Player has been released in many versions ranging from 6.1 - 11.  The player has a lot of strong features, but many of which require plug-ins.  For users running Windows Vista or XP, I’d suggest using Windows Media Player as at least a starter.  If any other program below looks appealing, then go with that. 

VLC

The next media player is the open source VLC Media Player, which is available on all platforms and boasts 100 million downloads of its version 0.8.6.  It can handle pretty much any media format you throw at it, and comes many encoding and decoding databases for Windows, which reduces the amount of required plug-ins.  For more experienced users with many different file formats, you can’t really go wrong with VLC, as it handles nearly everything. 

Miro

Miro is another video software that manages a lot of online videos and incorporates other video software.  First off, it is available on all three major platforms - Windows, Mac, and Linux.  It uses a RSS Aggregator to collect the latest videos you want, features a BitTorrent client built-in, as well as a media player.  For Windows, the media player is VLC.  For Mac OS X, it is QuickTime.  And if you are running Linux, then it comes with either Xine Media Player or GStreamer.  One of the main features of Miro is its use of BitTorrent, which is definitely a plus if you Torrent a lot. 

ALShow

The next media player is Windows only.  It’s very popular yet but it does have some nifty features.  On the homepage, it lists a few features such as:

# Loads Faster & Plays Smoother
# Play FLV Files - Get the codec in the ALShow Codec Center!
# Codecs Included - Never search for codecs again
# Video / Screen / Audio Capture - Save parts as video, pictures, or audio
# Loop Video Segments - Want to watch that again a few times?
# Instantly Hide ALShow - Press the ESC key
# Caption & Subtitle Support

Based on the system requirements, ALShow does not take up a lot of system resources, which is important in a video player.  One key advantage to ALShow is that all of the codecs are built-in.  After you download ALShow, you would never have to download any additional codecs. 

GomPlayer

The last media player I have for today is GomPlayer, a media player designed for Windows, which is especially popular in South Korea.  Some core features of the player is that it can play many different types of files without codecs, and can play broken files.  The player was developed in South Korea for Gom-TV.  If you live in South Korea, you have probably already heard of this player and possibly use it, as it is more popular than Windows Media Player in South Korea.  Otherwise, it’s not very popular here in the United States. 

Well there you have it.  Each media player listed above has its own specialties and unique aspects.  However, each player is still a quality, free program that will hopefully be continued in the future. 

Check it out [Windows Media Player]
Check it out [VLC]
Check it out [Miro]
Check it out [ALShow]
Check it out [GomPlayer]