Anyone who is fond of videos (which most of us are) has at some point or other bumped into the situation where you can’t play the video for the lack of codecs or proper software.
Lets first see what all is required to play a video file and then we will look at how to overcome the problem.
To play any video file that exists in the wildest corners of the web you only need 2 things:
Are you sick of Mac OS X Front row, Windows Media Center or want a media center for Linux. Boxee is a new kind of media center that runs on Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux, it will also support Windows in the near future (meanwhile check out cool windows media center alternatives). The framework that Boxee is built off of is XBMC which is the best media center available for Xbox.
If you’re not familiar with Songbird then here’s an article by Mark from a few months back in case you missed it.
I vaguely remember trying Songbird years ago and soon gave up due to it being hopelessly slow and buggy, but considering it’s still only in alpha (0.6.2) I can understand.
After reading Mark’s article I was motivated to try it out again.
I discovered huge improvements and while there are still performance issues, its acceptable and usable and has a great default theme. Music libraries of 10,000 songs are now comfortably supported and development moves every bit closer to beta.
It’s time for another poll. Last time we asked you about music players. Today we are doing the same for video players.
What video player do you use to play movies and other video files? If you’re a regular MUO user, there is a good chance you have a nice video player on your system. Something that is capable of playing pretty much any movie. So like we did in the past, we are asking you to tell us about it. Help us find the best video player out there.
It seems that with the rising popularity of online digitally distributed content, the internet has become more and more saturated with streaming/downloading video services. For example, there’s Joost and Hulu, which offers shows that you can view for free from anywhere that has an internet connection. Well, Adobe has also joined in on the running with Adobe Media Player.
So you have found yourself up into the wee hours of the morning downloading your favorite television series from your childhood (don’t worry we won’t tell anyone it’s the Smurfs!) only to discover that it won’t play?
Maybe it’s the video, audio or even both. What do you do?
I have been using a tool called Gspot for a long time now to figure out what is going on with my videos. This is how it works. First download the Gspot 2.70a package. It requires no installation and works very simply.
After you launch it, you will see a screen like this:
Television sets and CD players are rapidly becoming a thing of the past for me. I spend most of my waking day in front of the computer and so I have adopted the practice of having DVD’s and CD’s playing in the top right hand corner of the screen while I work. Whether it’s a DVD rental from the shop, BBC streaming news broadcasts or the new iTunes download, media players have become an essential part of my internet life.
Here’s a brief selection of the media players I have encountered over the past few years.
Here you go, a quick internet TV round-up: Top Internet TV players for your desktop, major directories to watch popular TV content for FREE, and a bunch of websites to stream live TV channels.
(1) Internet TV Players
Joost (www.joost.com)
Over 100 high-definition TV shows (Comedy central, Punk’d, Super Cars, Nat geo, etc.) and channels from various categories (Cartoons, Film, Comedy, Music, Documentary, Entertainment, Sports, and Liefstyle). More Joost screenshots here.
Zattoo (www.zattoo.com)
Zattoo provides excellent picture quality and viewing experience. Service is mainly focused on European channels and offers almost 50 live TV channels (some channels are limited to particular geographical locations.)
