What's your preferred media player?

[Jeff7]

I'm trying to watch shows I recorded off TV; using Windows Media Player 8, on WinXP with 512MB of RAM. Problem is, when the video file is open, I watch in Task Manager as my available memory drops from 260MB to under 10MB in less than 5 minutes. It does this even if the video is paused. Then the computer starts swapping and gets really sluggish. So, I suppose I'll begin the quest for a better media player, and therefore, I'm looking for recommendations.

 

[NicColt]

for my own personal player of choice it's VCDCutter. Ok I know it's an old mpeg editor but damm.... find me a player that shrinks the vid while still in full screen mode and the nav keys are great.

 

[NEVERwinter]

Media Player 6.4....
or Winamp with Video plugin....
or SASAMI player...

you know, i never experienced your memory problem

 

[leinadM]

I hate the newer versions of Windows Media Player, the older ones are OK.

 

[madthumbs]

BS Player - Low cpu, very compatable with troublesome movies, nice interface, spdif out.

Zoom Player - Highly configurable!, nice interface, spdif out.

Sasami2k - Best Interface, Excellent control features, no spdif out.

 

[vexingv]

Zoomplayer w/ MacAqua skin! the best media player i've used...lotsa features

 

[Shagga]

I'm going out on a limb here,

But, I like WMP9 and WinAMP

 

[oniq]

I use Xine

 

[VicodiN]

Another vote fer WinAMP

 

[Rand]

WMP8.

My requirements are fairy lenient however in that respect however, so I really don't need much beyond the bare bones media playback capabilities.

 

[rbV5]

Zoomplayer is excellent and also I use the ATI fileplayer.

 

[Turkey]

QCDPlayer for music, WMP6.4 for movies.

 

[Davegod]

WMP8 for mp3/vid clips, windvd or powerdvd (i cant tell apart tbh) for dvd. winamp i used to prefer a little but i got some "enhancer" which now makes it adjust windows volume when i run winamp, which is really annoying for games, and cba fixing it - wmp8 is fine.

 

[Nighthawk69]

I have Xine tuned for DVD's with raw devices and everything--as good as it gets on a PC for DVD playback For all other video files I use mplayer...

For those who have no idea what those are, they are not for Windows

Edit: ... and xmms for my music

 

[Cat13]

QCD for music, WMP & DIVX for movies

 

[prosaic]

I love my WMP 9. I use the Intervideo X-Pack app so that I can watch my DVDs with it, too.

 

[elkinm]

WMP 6.4 for videos, old RealJukebox for mp3s.

New WMP for some ASF and WMV files as they seek quickly, but sometimes can't seek at all. Anyway to make 6.4 seek as fast as the later versions and still run as well as always?

 

[aceO07]

Originally posted by: madthumbs
BS Player - Low cpu, very compatable with troublesome movies, nice interface, spdif out.

Zoom Player - Highly configurable!, nice interface, spdif out.

Sasami2k - Best Interface, Excellent control features, no spdif out.

I gave BS Player a try and it's pretty nice. I needed a media player for my laptop Pentium 150mhz MMX with 224MB RAM. Media player 6/7 are horribly sluggish when in full screen mode. Divx player alpha2 is nice, but it likes to hang after a while.

 

[Jeomite]

I use Windows Media Player (with the "Classic" skin because their default skin for the newer WMPs are ugly :|) for all formats suchs as DivX, MPEG-1, AVI, etc...

Otherwise, I use PowerDVD for MPEG-2/DVD video.

 

[BFG10K]

Windows Media Player 8xx (the one with Windows XP) works great for me. I use it for MP3s and music CDs it sounds great to me. Plus it never skips, it doesn't use much CPU power, it has great skinning technology and the visualisations are quite cool, even if I just use the plain old green bars most of the time.