VLC Media Player

What can I say? VLC is one of the best players around. It plays most video files easily and without the need for extra codecs except Real Media. If you don’t want to faff about getting codecs to play this and that then this will do the trick.

If you’re into your P2P and BiTorrent downloads then this is essential because it can play incomplete videos without interrupting your download. Another nice thing about VLC is the way it handles high quality and high-def videos. It runs them really smoothly without as much lagging as most media players do, which is great.

Even though it plays most videos, there are the odd ones that it either completely refuses to play or just doesn’t display properly. This can leave you stuck and scrambling for those codecs you were trying to avoid, but that’s very rare and unlikely for the average guy. Also, the video quality isn’t really the best out there, but that’s just me being fussy.

All in all, VLC is really popular for a reason. Its really convenient and works great. I definitely recommend it as a main player or at least a backup player, should your main one fail with a certain video type.
But if you want something that can handle absolutely everything and is configurable, then give GOM Player a try.

Website: http://www.videolan.org
GOM Player Site: http://www.gomlab.com/eng/