4. Media Player Classic

I mentioned earlier that many users prefer older versions of Windows Media Player to the more recent (bloated) editions. Media Player Classic isn’t really an older version of Windows Media Player, but it’s an ideal blend of new and functional with old-time-familiar.

Look familiar? Media Player Classic is modeled on Windows Media Player 6.4

Media Player Classic is an open source video and music player. Like VLC, it offers little in the line of library functionality, but it too will play practically any video format that most users will happen across. A combination of the two is a popular choice: there’s very little that can’t be opened by one or the other.

Where Media Player Classic really has the edge is in highly compressed video files; Flash Video (the format used by sites like YouTube) won’t play in VLC. It also offers an alternative to Real Player, in the form Real Alternative, which is a separate application that operates through Media Player Classic. Many files are encoded in the RM format because of the excellent compression it offers; sadly, Real Player itself has become a bloated, inefficient application.

Real Alternative won’t play streaming RealMedia files; for that you’ll need an actual install of RealPlayer (which most of us can live without).

Of course, for those of you who prefer to use versions of Windows Media Player prior to Windows Media Player 11, there is a way to uninstall and rollback to a previous version. You can find the method behind this madness here.

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