Filed under: Video, Freeware, Open Source
3 free video players for watching almost any movie
But our wonderful readers pointed out that SMPlayer was hardly unique. You've probably heard of VLC, but here are three other media players that can handle pretty much any video you can throw at them. Oh yeah, and they're all absolutely free.
GOM Player
This freeware media player comes with a ton of popular video codecs preloaded. For codecs that GOM Player cannot handle, the software automatically takes you to open source software sites to download the appropriate files.
GOM Player can also handle partial AVI files. That means you can watch movies while you're still downloading them. Or if you've only managed to download part of the video, you can check it out to see if it's worth downloading the rest.
KMPlayer
Like GOM Player, KMPlayer includes a ton of codecs for watching most video files right out of the box. If you want to watch a file in a proprietary format like h.264, you can specify an external decoder to use with the media player.
KMPlayer can also handle damaged AVI files, Quicktime movies, and Real Media files. You'll need to have RealPlayer and QuickTime installed, or download Real Alternative and QuickTime Alternative.
rulesPlayer
This unassuming little media player is a powerhouse of video codec compatibility. Like SMPlayer, rulesPlayer is built as a frontend for MPlayer.
RulesPlayer includes support for multiple languages, and can handle 12 different subtitle formats.
Conclusion
Do you need 3 different video players? Nope. Any one of these will do. As would SMPlayer, VLC, or Media Player Classic. But it's nice to have choices, no?