Which player is worthy of your multimedia files?
October 26th, 2009 | Published on: Roundup
Which player is worthy of your multimedia files
A multimedia player enables you to play movies, music, video clips, TV shows and any audio and video file. Multimedia players have become essential applications for any PC delivering the highest audio and video quality. Next, you´ll get to know the most popular players covering all multimedia aspects. We introduce you to Windows Media Player, Winamp, iTunes, Songbird and VLC Media Player. These players present features of their own, some of them allow users to manage their files, and others feature hundreds of plug-ins.
Windows Media Player
As with almost every type of program in the world of the PC, the influence of Microsoft Windows is strong when it comes to choosing a multimedia player. So what better place to begin talking about these programs than with the one that is installed by default on this operating system?
Windows Media Player strength lies in the use and management of multimedia files, mainly thanks to its Media Library, with which users can arrange and catalogue their files, thereby making it easier to find exactly what they want to play. What’s more, it features tools for ripping and burning CDs, together with another for synchronizing with portable devices.
This player also comes with a collection of accessories and enhancements with which you can, among other things, change various aspects of the audio output, link the program to Windows Live Messenger, and more.
Without a doubt, the weakest aspects of Microsoft’s media player are the options for playing podcasts and the lack of features it offers users for playing videos.
Winamp
Historically, Winamp has always been the most popular multimedia player, thanks to its winning combination of interesting tools, low resource consumption, and ease of use.
Nowadays, Winamp comes with various different tools for playing audio and video, podcast subscription options, playlists, m3u support, support for streaming radio, a multimedia library, and synchronization with all sorts of mobile devices.
As if all that wasn’t enough, this player also stands out for the large amount of plug-ins that can be added to it, thus achieving unique sounds, professional-standard automatic track mixing, and much more.
iTunes
iTunes is the multimedia player of Mac OS, which Apple has now ported to the Windows platform, resulting in a rather strange hybrid.
In themselves, the player’s features are good. It has multiple features for playing audio and video, supports podcasts, plays internet radio stations from all over the world, and can burn and rip audio to and from audio CDs. Plus, it features a wide variety of options for the Apple iPod and iPhone, even if the same can’t be said for other portable devices.
However, after using it for a while you can see that, despite being a great player, there’s no justification for the amount of system resources that it uses up, mainly due to the fact that it is not a program that has been designed for use under Microsoft Windows. Add to this certain other limitations and it becomes very clear that Apple launched iTunes thinking almost exclusively about iPod and iStore users, rather than the possible needs of those users open to other options.
Songbird
If by now you were thinking that there’s no player out there capable of beating the ones already mentioned, you’d be very wrong. Just as Web 2.0 continues to make headlines, Songbird could be described as a sort of Player 2.0. The central portion of its user interface features a Mozilla-based web browser, complete with tabs, that is sure to make this program a hit.
Songbird is able to play some of your favourite tracks even if you don’t have them stored on your PC since it provides you with access to sites where you can search for and play free-to-download songs and other audio files. What’s more, you’ll have a large number of online plug-ins at hand which will notably enhance and build upon the performance of the player.
It goes without saying that this program also comes with support for many different audio and video formats, along with different models and types of portable media devices.
VLC Media Player
Last but not least we have VLC Media Player, a program that may not look like much of a threat to the other players talked about here but that, once you start to use it, you’ll see just how handy it can be to have around.
VLC doesn’t have any library for organizing and administrating your multimedia files. Instead, you simply make a playlist to listen to right now or load a previously saved one. The user interface is pretty basic – and not in the least attractive to be honest – but, despite this, this program is one of the most popular media players around.
The secret lies in the large bundle of codecs that it comes with and which let it play practically any multimedia file that you can get your hands on. No matter what challenge it’s faced with, VLC responds without hesitation, consuming very few system resources whilst achieving an enviable play-back quality.
Choosing just one single player would mean missing out on the features and possible benefits of all the others, for which reason combining more than one and then making use of the features that you need or want the most is surely the best answer when it comes down to kitting out your PC.
In this way, it´s important to know which player is the most convenient according to the multimedia content we wish to play. We consider that Windows Media Player, Winamp, Songbird and iTunes are all great players with similar features and the same audio and video quality level. Only VLC makes a difference thank to the user friendly codec installation. But as we all know, the appearance in a player is also important, that´s why Winamp and iTunes are both great looking players with a wide variety of wonderful skins and great functionality.
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