Top 5 Free Media Players For Windows
There is a multitude of software on the web. Of those, some of the coolest are media players.
Today, we will be looking at some of the best media players on the web for Windows. (There have been a couple of MakeUseOf polls on best audio players and video players as well.)
Ready? Let’s go.
1. VLC Media Player
VLC is one, if not the, best media player ever created. It is lightweight, portable, and can play almost any media format out there (incl. videos downloaded from sites like Youtube). VLC can even be used as a streaming media server, can play DVD’s, can be used as an audio decoder, and doesn’t require external, extra codecs to run.
VLC can also accompany customizable skins, as well as nearly every operating system that exists (Mac, Windows and Linux). I highly recommend trying it out.
2. Media Jukebox
Media Jukebox is an all-in-one media player, music collection organizer, iPod connector and music store with extreme tagging techniques. This music player can pretty much do it all. While not as small as VLC, it definitely does have a bunch of features. It can even be used to sync your phone, while finding tags for your newest imported songs, and simultaneously downloading the newest plug-in to customize your user experience. Sweet, right?
You can further maximize Media Jukebox’s abilities by adding playlists to download automatically and creating or using a custom skin. Media Jukebox deserves to be on this list for sure. For complete feature overview see Organize your Music Collection Effectively With Media JukeBox.
3. Songbird
Songbird is one of the most customizable media players ever created. Besides being created by Mozilla, and being open source, it allows users to create add-ons/plug-ins for added user experience. Built-in options include: Last.fm playback history plug-in, support for the iPod, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, metadata management, etc.
To get a feel on what can be done with Songbird extensions check out our earlier article on Songbird extensions. Songbird truly shows what media players need to become with regard to customization.
4. Winamp
Many music fanatics are familiar with Winamp as being one of the most widely used media players in the world. It has developed into one of the most feature oriented media players ever created. Features include: lots of customizable skins, built-in internet radio, support for a wide variety of audio and video formats, flash support, customizable plug-ins, support for multiple languages, ability to sync with your iPod, etc.
There is a free version, of course, but you can upgrade to the PRO version for even more features.
(Note: Winamp has been previously talked about on MakeUseOf here.)
5. KMPlayer
KMPlayer, while not as widely used, is one of the best, free, media players. While supporting numerous different formats, languages, skins, etc, it is relatively lightweight and can be used for numerous different media related material.
The application itself is extremely customizable by it’s own settings, but can be further customized to fit your own needs as well. Features include: Compressed album support, multiple file formats, numerous decoders, support for subtitles, plug-ins, etc.
Stay tuned next time for more cool Windows tips and tricks! In the meantime, why don’t you tell us in the comments which media player you have installed on your Windows system and why you prefer it over all others? What features are the deal-clincher for you?
(By) Will Mueller is a computer nerd and geek that enjoys web development and general programming. You can check out his site at willm.me.
Another one is AIMP2
http://www.aimp.ru/index.php?action_skin_change=yes&skin_name=english
Agree!
I don’t know why is this player is not yet as famous as others.
I’ve been looking for a good music player for years, and was not happy with all the others, and then… Boom! Love from first sight!
AIMP2 is the best
aimp2 for music
kmp for audio
you forgot to mention GOM player, BS player and Quintessential Player ?
BS is another excellent player, been using it for years
I’d have to recommend the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) and Media Player Classic for video. It’s the best thing I’ve found to play videos.
Foobar is a great audio player too.
hey i have a problem .sometimes my pc plays videos but doesnt show image only sound and it shows a light black screen.
othertimes it shows normally . i ve tried many players but nothing what do u suggest?
You didnt mention how VLC can save a file in a different format while you play it.
well, it does mentio that it “can be used as an audio decoder”.
I was also going to mention AIMP. Great music player… Probably the best…
My vote goes to GOM. It is near perfect for videos. but for audio I would mention foobar as the best…
Foobar2000 is, imho, a much lighter, must more configurable, but just as powerful media player (for music specifically) than any of these.
If you set up keyboard shortcuts and get the album searching plugin, even with no further configuration this is an incredibly powerful music player.
Then you can add columns (helps make foobar more customizable) – addons like bookmarks (allows you to save bookmarks for long audio files like speeches or audio books) – a plethora of visualizations, etc. to make it even more ridiculously useful and customizable.
I was a fan of VLC until I updated from 0.8.6 to 0.9.4 or whatever….. it totally hosed the front panel buttons on my Dell notebook, there’s finger pointing about the Qt or GTK graphics libraries & toolkit, whatever… it just became broken for me, I don’t care who’s to blame.
It’s free, so I can’t complain, but that doesn’t mean I have to remain silent.
I used Vlc and kmplayer both are fine, AIMP is audio palyer than Media player correct me if I am wring AImp and foobar 2000 both good audio palyers.
Dan: I must have been lucky – I upgraded VLC to V0.9 and an online streaming radio station that I could not get before suddenly worked. So I am happy
Also, it is Open Source, so goes well with my FireFox, Thunderbird, Miranda (multi-protocol IM client), etc.
N
I used to use Media Player Classic, then started using VLC, but after their latest update it looks like I will either use their older version again or just use MPC. VLC 0.9.4 just has something wrong, just like what Dan was saying. I hope they fix it, I did send them my feedback.
For me winamp is still for those who listen to music only, I wont use it to watch video, it just doesn’t work well with me. The future is for Songbird, if they don’t end up screwing it like what VLC did.
I’d prefer Windows Media Player with K-lite cod Pakc. Sometimes, I will convert the video to wmv video for playback on windows media player with this video converter, works pretty well. It also has Mac version for apple user.
As for the problems some of the people are having with the new version of VLC, It is the first version of an entirely new and reworked interface and not even all of the advanced settings have been integrated so of course there are going to be a bunch of bugs.
As for AIMP as I understand it it has no video support, which to my understanding all of the ones listed do (Songbird with Extentions) however I could be wrong about that.
I was going to bring up Media Player Classic, but someone beat me to it. I however was going to suggest the free K-Lite Mega Codec Pack from CodecGuides.com.
So if you are using a more modern version of Windows, open the run command and launch Media Player (The original One) by typing “mplayer2″. If you have Direct Show Codecs installed it will play them… not always with the best colour quality, but it will play them.
No mater how cumbersome…. i tried playing videos simultaneosly, from vlc, cyberlink, gom you name it. The victor is Media Player Classic. It gave thre richest color, vibrant and clear.
The best things in life are 4 free. hehehe.
B4 i used winamp, 4 music playing because it has dfx really better quality in sounds, yet it messes up with my video codecs with other players.. downside…
Anyway i’ll try AIMP2 as suggested above.
I still prefer 1BY1 player : http://mpesch3.de1.cc/1by1.html
- it’s indeed free
- only 145 Kb
- no need to start organizing your music collection and MP3 tags.
- Quality sound, integrated enhancers and equalizer
- can skip silences so you get a continuous mix
- simple interface
- no clutter like “buy online” shit or all those other annoying “extensions” of broadspread music players.
A good one you forgot is MediaMonkey. You can download free at http://www.mediamonkey.com
Here’s another vote for foobar2000. It’s light, fast, and extremely customizable.
The video you’re playing in the VLC is hilarious! I love “The IT Crowd”…
As far as the players go, I’ll have to try out some of the new suggestions to me.
aimp2 is that underrated?
The players are good.
It would be better if latest versions are available to download on this site.
hii, the VLC player is best for watching vedios…GOM player is also the best player….but we can get good clarity in VLC
Which one(s), if any, allow you to filter for duplicates in your collection?
very good players but i am expecting little more.
” Enjoyable Players “
Great players, but I think neither Songbird nor Media Jukebox handle podcasts… or do they? That’s a deal breaker for me.
I use MediaMonkey and am quite happy with it – my use is probably far less sophisticated as the rest of you, so simple is better in my case – would like to see reviews of the other players mentioned in these comments – better yet, how about a datasheet comparison feature-by-feature?
great article – thanks!
i just got got media monkey. dont like the fade in/out thing. ruins the songs i think. and its a bitch trying to figure out how to update the album info. keeps getting me to try to buy shit.
When it come to tunes im always ising Cowon Jet Audio
http://www.cowonamerica.com/download/
As for movies etc? i have always and prolly always will use MPC
I am selecting a new player for music. Currently, I’m using winamp. My guitar teacher uses a Mac and he has a nice player called Finetunes, by S’Sworks that allows for placing bookmarks in music files from where you can resume play. Switching between these bookmarks is really fast and the player does not have the annoying fade-in/out when you press play or stop, respectively.
Any suggestions for music players (only music, no video).
Oh, I almost forgot, the link to that Finetunes player is the following:
http://homepage.mac.com/seishu/ssworks/finetunes/finetunes.html
My vote goes to Media Monkey.I have used a lot of media players and all of the above mentioned but Media Monkey is my favourite.
its got interchangeable skins and auto tag from web feature
it cant play videos however
Come on people the top five an Moovida is not up there thats ruff, Moovida is flipping fantastic, well it is what i have been using for ages an will continue to use.
You should check it out
http://www.moovida.com
Here’s wot, folks: on Thursday just as Windows was almost finished downloading media player 11, boom!, electricity goes, system goes, then restarts and I can’t get the media player to open!So, what does a guy do, but google search an’ try out stuff?
Right, but guess what?
1. Shoutcast on winamp wasn’t working.
2. Songbird doesn’t support c.ds!!!!
3. Quintessential worked for about 1 c.d and then decided that it wouldn’t do it for others and, for good measure, the shoutcast radio refuses to work. Hell, it locks up my system when uninstalling! It’s still on, i’ve left it alone!
4. MediaMonkey… sorry not working and…
5. Oh, yeah:Media jukebox refuses to work also….
I’m wonderin’ wot the heck is goin’ on…
HELLLPPPP! I NEED MY MUSIC AND NOTHING SEEMS TO WORK!
HEELLLPPP!
It would help if you were more descriptive. Tell us, is there an error message, do you not hear sound, etc. Just saying that an application is “sorry not working” does not help us to address your problem.
Hello, Will and thanks for the response. Let me give you as full a picture as possible:first of all, I didn’t see any error messages, nor did I hear any sounds. I don’t know if my choice of media to test is the problem here: c.d.s. I haven’t completed my task of committing all my c.d.s to the digital side of things as yet.
This was quite the strangest thing for me to experience, I mean, nothing, absolutely nothing responded when I tried to operated controls on Media Jukebox and MediaMonkey. With Quintessential, I opened it again and tried to get just the web radio functional and nothing. It’s controls seemed frozen and unresponsive too. In MediaMonkey, the c.d. I used wasn’t a burn, but the genuine article, the program read it and identified each track and yet, when I clicked on ‘play now’, nothing but silence and a rolling over of the track titles.
With Quintessential, the radio allows you to choose a station, but then when you click on play selected station, nothing but silence and the entire screen just freezes.No kidding! I just did that little experiment again and guess what? Now the screen won’t even minimize. It seems to have locked up, or trying to lock up everything. I just don’t get it.
I do hope you can give advice quickly. It’s frustrating!
Well, I am not sure of the specifics of your system. But, you should be sure you have a compatible operating system (of course), and a 32-bit OS/chip if necessary, as well as enough RAM (over 1.5GB of course). Other then that, MediaMonkeey only skips ovr tracks if it is unable to read the tracks or if they are not in the proper location. You should also make sure your tracks are in the proper, playable format (mp3, wav, flac, etc) and that you have set proper permissions to each application, etc. There could always be a problem with the registry, in which case, the only fix is usually to re-install the operating system.
Hey, Will,
Again, I’m grateful for your response. I think I’ve found the real source of the problem: a ‘missing’ media audio controller. I believe what happened last night was that in trying to set my audio right, I clicked on the SoundMax icon only to get the message that it was not present. I found this odd, since i saw the icon pinned to the start menu, present on my all programs menu as well as located in the control panel.
No matter where I tried to open it, no interface came up. So… I, unwisely I should say now, removed it from my programs! Now, I’m having a time finding the right media audio controller and the correct drivers. Frustrating, doubly so because I brought this on myself.
Again, any advice or help would be peachy, mon!Thanks for whatever you could do, ‘k?
Will,
I forgot to forward my system specs: Windows XP Pro Version 2002, Service Pack 3, with an AMD Sempron 2600 processor, running at 1.6 GHz. I have an Asus board, the K8V-MX series, VIA K8M800 Chipset support.
Again, thanks for any help with my problem.
i’m surprised you didn’t add media monkey, how come?
Thanks for letting us know about songbird, looks like a sick new project, can’t wait to mess with it!
its the TOP 5, not the top 100, thats why the others wern’t mentioned!! And aimp does NOT have video play, there for its not a media, but an audio player. Same goes for mediamonkey.
nice softwares…!!!
i have just downloaded the software ’songbird’ really awesome..!!!
km player is best among all the media players as shown above./
Hey among all players KMPlayer is the best by comparing all the features it was the best one. With clear sound clarity and video clarity with all its decoders and album art gives a sleek look its really a very good one .No player can reach it.
Thanks.
How to transfer video to ipod?here is an answer.
AIMP2 IS THE BEST PLAYER
NEW VERSION IS v2.60, build 525
JetAudio Plus VX for music because it has added enhancements that other players make you pay for, and its free on the internets. For video I used to use GOM player but now I’ve found that the player included in the K-Lite Mega Codec install is cool, Media Player Classic Home Cinema is the best, it utilizes the least amount of CPU and memory of all players for less stuttering and system bogdown, and because I’m running and Atom CPU I really need that.
AIMP2 PLAYER FOR MUSIV AND VLC MEDIA PLAYER FOR VIDEO
Hey among all players KMPlayer is the best by comparing all the features it was the best one. With clear sound clarity and video clarity with all its decoders and album art gives a sleek look its really a very good one .No player can reach it.
Thanks.
OMG IT Crowd on the VLC Player!
I agree with VLC for movies, but for music, it’s boiled down to Foobar and Songbird. Everything else is really just meh.