What is your favourite media player?

[PH]

OK, so what is your favourite media player? And why?

These are media players I have used. I know there are more, like AIMP, MediaMonkey and others, but I think these five are the most used anyway. You can still vote for the 'others', but please specify which one.


Like I said, I know all of these media players, but there's only one winner for me: Winamp. I like how it's so easy to use and I've used this program since its initial release on april 21, 1997. Coincidentally, same year and date as my little brother's birth.
Too bad they decided to shut it down... (Winamp I mean, not my brother).

So without updates (and it's given me a script error everytime since the shutdown) I'm willing to go for something else.

I've been using Windows Media Player for a few weeks now and it's better than I expected. A giant leap forward from earlier releases. For instance, the library function is pretty neat. But like with all things Windows, WMP has the bad habit of doing things to my system behind my back. Like secretly downloading album art and (even worse) deleting manually downloaded album art. This is a real pain.

The other player I still regularly use is VLC. But I use it only for playing video (avi's) and DVDs.


I'm very interested in what kind of audio player you use!

[Teunis]

Window Media Player and satisfied with it. Only use it for playing albums and video's on my pc and it's sufficient for me.

[Peter]

ever since its existence: clearly foobar2000

reasons:

1) minimalistic, yet adaptable
2) no spy-ware (my eyes fell out when i found out what Windows Mediaplayer tells M$)
3) can do lots of stuff (play music, edit tags, rip cds (although I mainly use EAC, organize files)
4) small footprint (memory- and cpu- wise)
5) player never modifies your files unless you tell him to (in contrast to Windows Media Player, itunes, et al)
6) no installer needed, just a binary and a few dlls

my clear recommendation to everyone.

for videos i use VLC.

[keyboardistmatt]

I gotta say mine's Media Player.

...but only because Winamp irritates me, I avoid iTunes (because I went out of my way to avoid the iPhone), Foobar I've never even heard of, and VLC I'm interested in, but haven't had the time to explore yet.

Other than that, I go for physical media; mainly CD and Vinyl.

[keyboardistmatt]

2) no spy-ware (my eyes fell out when i found out what Windows Mediaplayer tells M$)

Just curious...

What does WMP tell Microsoft?

[Peter]

Just curious...

What does WMP tell Microsoft?

Well, I haven't done an extensive analysis of WMP's network traffic myself, but by default, it will tell MS about each and every file you play. Along with your IP address (i.e. the source of the network traffic), which is nowadays a relatively static information, this will give a very neat usage profile. Expect to see customized ads while browsing web sites

[Peter]

for reference, just do a search for "windows media player spies" in a search engine of your choice

[johninblack]

VLC. If used purly as a media player it is one of the best but if you delve down into some of it's other features it becomes awesome!
Some of these other players quite posibly do all, and more than VLC, I wouldn't know. I'm happy with VLC and see no point looking at the others.

[PH]

VLC. If used purly as a media player it is one of the best but if you delve down into some of it's other features it becomes awesome!
Some of these other players quite posibly do all, and more than VLC, I wouldn't know. I'm happy with VLC and see no point looking at the others.

Hey John, you made me curious. What are the other features besides being a media player that makes it so awesome? I also use VLC a lot, but only for playing media.

[johninblack]

Hey John, you made me curious. What are the other features besides being a media player that makes it so awesome? I also use VLC a lot, but only for playing media.

Hi Paco, the two I use the most are very similar. Every now and again you come accross a film or tv episode that has the sound or the subtitles out of sync. Under Tools -> Track Synchronisation you have the ability to advance or retard both of these. We once wanted to watch a Chineese martial arts film in chineese that didn't come with subtitles, there are websites that allow you to download subtitle files and VLC allows you to add these. I also use it's ability to rip audio from cd's occasionally and there are other features I very occasionally use but I think the big thing for me is simply that I like the layout and it does what it says on the tin very, very well indeed. I can't remember the last time it crashed or froze if it ever has.