VLC Media Player

VLC media is a standard-setter for cross-platform, open-source, reliable, dependable, configurable media players. No doubt. Except one tiny thing: Recently... VLC has gotten slow. Slow on Mac, slow on Linux, and... a little (not much) on Windows. (At least Windows 10.) VLC deserves respect of a kind very few apps do. It's free, open source AND... at the time of writing (5th March 2017) it's beating Dropbox (nasty sh*t that that is - and it is, trust me!) as the most popular app for Windows on this site. That takes some doing. It really does. But... here's the thing...: If ultimate customizability isn't so important to you, try MPV. Like VLC, MPV is open source, free and all the rest. But it's likely to load faster and play your thing with fewer glitches and hitches. Until you need the subtitles to be 5 pixels from the left edge of the screen and 8 ms offset from the audio. Then it's back to VLC.

Probably the heavyweight of Media Players, but on my old laptop I get "choppy" audio. Have made many changes but still no good. Rather than waste more time with VLC I've returned to using what works for me, and that's Media Player Classic - Home Cinema and sometimes MPC-BE (Black Edition). Both work "out of the box" without giving me a headache.

[Edited by maxbramble, February 12]

There is no better media player for Windows. It has all the codecs, RTPS and YouTube support, just always works. I just wish they finally updated the UI to something more modern, but you can always use custom skins.

Why two stars then? It's the worst media player for Linux. I tried it on many distributions for years. It crashes, hangs, breaks when the system is resumed from sleep, and stays in the background after closing.

Nothing is better when it comes to video players on Windows!

Fully featured and the de facto standard media player. In past years it became unstable for me and I had constant issues, it kind of became slow bloated mess. Switched to mpv but still sometimes use some of the more advanced functionality

It can play many different formats including DVDs and Blu-rays. It doesn't play some .mp4 h.265 videos smoothly though, even on a 2023 Core-i5 PC.

I've been using VLC Media Player for years, and it has never let me down. One of the most significant advantages is its versatility; it can handle almost any multimedia file format you throw at it, from common ones like MP4 and MP3 to more obscure formats. The fact that it's free and open-source is a massive plus, making it accessible to everyone without any hidden costs or annoying ads. I also love how lightweight it is—VLC runs smoothly on all my devices, whether I'm on my laptop, smartphone, or even an older desktop. The intuitive interface makes it easy to navigate, and the customizable features allow me to tweak settings to my liking. Plus, the constant updates from the community ensure it stays ahead of the curve with new functionalities and bug fixes. VLC Media Player is, without a doubt, the best multimedia player out there.