VLC Media Player

VLC - the cross-platform media player and streaming server

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player that supports various audio and video formats (MPEG-4, MPEG-2, MPEG-1, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

The stream can be MPEG 2 TS in UDP or HTTP packets unicasted or multicasted on an IPv4 or IPv6 network.

VLC Media Player has great hotkey support, if you take the time to learn the shortcuts so it can be controlled without touching your mouse. If you're watching DVDs or video files through it, this is not an issue.

For music, it plays more or less any file and features an equalizer and playlist creation. VLC Media Player isn't as intuitive as iTunes as a media manager, but it's a much more flexible player in terms of file formats. You can even use VLC to convert your files, and on top of all the formats and physical media it will play, many streaming protocols and TV capture cards are supported.

VLC Media Player makes it easy to add subtitles to your video files too - just add the SRT file to the folder where your video is kept, and it will automatically play with subtitles.

The interface is functional, but by no means attractive - but you can download skins to completely change VLC Media Player's appearance. The preferences menu is comprehensive without being overwhelming, and there is extensive documentation online.

Software rating: 10 / 10 points
Supported Languages: English, Croatian, German
Supported Operating Systems: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8