WMP vs other players. I need a new player. Which one?

Deleted member 94297 · Aug 10, 2010

Hi everyone. I have bought Roccat Kave headset yesterday. I was watching a movie, when the sound started to turn off from the right front headset. I tought this is a hardware problem. However, i have restareted the player and the sound was okay again.

Then the sound was gone in a few minutes again. I've restarted the player agian. ANd sound was okay again... Seems like software problem maybe. Can this be true?

After that, i started to investigate about players... I have discovered some threads, saying, that some players have better sound and video quality, than others. Also i am hoping, that other players won't need to be restarted.

So which players have the best sound and video quality? (i can use two players, if needed).

Also i ma using this codec pack (Windows 7, x64, Ultimate Edition): http://www.free-codecs.com/download/k_lite_codec_pack.htm, the full one i believe.

Moneyless · Aug 10, 2010

I use the K-Lite Codec Pack with Media Player Classic.

There isn't a video I can't play, and you can enable h.264 GPU acceleration (useful for playing HD video on my relatively weak college laptop).

Deleted member 94297 · Aug 10, 2010

I am looking into thse players, after reading a few reviews: KMP and MPC. KMP looks better, but the looks ain't everything after all. Plus i probably don't know some great, not very popular player. Also, i need more opinions.

Thanks for your reply.

nd4spdbh2 · Aug 10, 2010

Media Play Classic Home Cinema .... LOVE IT

My dell mini 9's win 7 install dont even have wmp cus i took it off before the install... and i use MPC... and even on my main rig i use MPC... its simple, light, and plays just about anything right outta the box... and EVERYTHING with a simple codec pack mentioned above.

Trap05 · Aug 10, 2010

Surprised nobody has mentioned VLC

Moneyless · Aug 10, 2010

Trap05 said:
Surprised nobody has mentioned VLC

MPC with K-Lite plays anything VLC plays (or doesn't) and does it better... MPC w/ K-Lite even got h.264 and VC-1 GPU acceleration before VLC.

Although VLC is still a great video player as well, and is good to keep as a backup (or to test whether or not your codecs are buggered) since it uses all its own codecs (which makes it great for a portable install like on a USB key).

Twigglish · Aug 10, 2010

I'm kind of surprised everyone is suggesting MPC and VLC for music.
Personally, I hated WMP since like... 6 came out. But I love WMP12.

If WMP12 is giving you trouble though(and a reinstall/codec update doesn't fix anything), I suggest Foobar or Songbird. If you're a big fan of FireFox, Songbird will feel very familiar.

Mpegger · Aug 10, 2010

If your just talking about music, I'd suggest MediaMonkey. Best damn music manager and portable player (as well as other devices) manager. I haven't touched Winamp in ages because of MediaMonkey.

Deleted member 94297 · Aug 10, 2010

Hmmm, so most people recommends MPC for movies i see as for now. Say your opinion still.

What about music players?

I've googled about music players like Songbird, i've heard, that for Windows 7 x64 it's very slow.

Anyway, waiting for more suggestions.

Probably going to download some player tommorow, as for americans my night is a day, should get more answers during that period of time.

Also, i love arguments.

P.S. does video and sound quality differs from the player or only from codecs?

habbajabba · Aug 10, 2010

I'm running win7 32bit and am using MPlayer for windows.
http://mulder.dummwiedeutsch.de/home/?page=projects#mplayer
It is portable & installable and requires no codecs although ac3 filter, a quicktime package, and ffdshow are recommended. It even has an autoupdate exe.
Media Player Classic Home Cinema would be my second choice. Especially if you have a dxva (ati) capable or cuda (nvidia) capable video card which I don't atm. For the absolute best quality video use dxva which is supported through the k-lite codec packages.
I only use it for occasional video as my divx player has usb support.

Audio in windows? Foobar hands down. Blows everything else out of the water. Plays anything, even backwards with the foo_input_reverse.dll plugin. It can't update itself however. NBD as it's page is well organized. I run it portably from a slave drive and never ever have any problems whatsoever and always use the latest beta build.
Leave wmp installed but actually using it to play anything directly is a joke.

Old Thrashbarg · Aug 10, 2010

I've googled about music players like Songbird, i've heard, that for Windows 7 x64 it's very slow.

Songbird is slow on everything. Instead of making a music player, they seem to be going for an everything + kitchen sink approach, and it's turned into a giant pig of a program.

Foobar2k is my choice for music... it's lightweight, only focuses on doing one thing and doing it well. The downside is that the default interface sucks, and it's not entirely straightforward to reconfigure it. (Though recent versions are a lot better on that front.)

For video, MPC-HC is hard to beat. Again, lightweight, single focus, etc., and again, not entirely straightforward to configure, but here's a good guide on setting it up. (You can optionally add ffdshow as well, but the MPC built-in codecs work fine, IMO, and it makes one less thing to set up.) KMplayer is reportedly decent as well, but it's been a few years since I've tried it so I can't comment on it.

As far as differences in sound/video quality between players... yes and no. It pretty much comes down to codecs and renderers, but two players configured similarly should produce similar results, since they all use the same basic Directshow framework underneath (on Windows, at least).

k88 · Aug 10, 2010

VLC is one of the best players In my opinion

ebug122 · Aug 10, 2010

+1 for foobar2000 as a music player and MPC for video

Automata · Aug 10, 2010

ebug122 said:
+1 for foobar2000 as a music player

Absolute best, hands down. Wish they made a linux version.

Deleted member 94297 · Aug 10, 2010

Okay, i decided to download the software now. So that is Foobar2000 and MPC. Although, at the official site http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/, the program is updated at 2007. That is quite old. Can that old player really be that good?

ebug122 · Aug 10, 2010

Get MPC with the K-lite codec pack

http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

The latest changelog says "Updated Media Player Classic Home Cinema to version 1.3.2121" and that was July 17th of this year.

Deleted member 94297 · Aug 10, 2010

Yea, a good idea. Although, i am concerned about the quality now, as the installation has a lot of options (mega pack). I was unable to find some guide, which tells, which options to choose for the best quality. Can someone point me to such a thing, or just tell which options to choose? I am really not really good at video decoding things... All those Habi, Gabest, ffshow, DivX... Sounds little unfamiliar to me.

Magicuser · Sep 14, 2010

I use k-lite mega codec pack with windows media player (not classic) it has played every thing i have thrown at it with out trouble.

medo145 · Sep 15, 2010

+1 MPC HC

dustingg · Sep 16, 2010

MPC plays it all, but if you want to test something independet give VLC a shot, if you still have issues, might be a hardware thing. Also try different media files, perhaps there was a problem with the file.

For music I use Songbird and WMP.

WMP vs other players. I need a new player. Which one?

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