Media Players
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iTunes
iTunes is an Audio Player from Apple. This program is ideal for for those who have a large collection of music files. Almost all popular formats are compatible with this program.
Using the ID3 tags that are part of MP3 files, iTunes can organize your files in various ways including by genre, arist, time period, composer by or dozens of other variables used for categorization.
iTunes has a few more features that are perfect in audio players these days, like an easy burn to CD feature, visualizations and ability to add an image to each song, like a CD cover or photograph of the artist.
Download iTunes
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PowerDVD
powerDVD is a very popular program for playing DVDs. Unfortunately, not so much anymore as the free version limits your playback to 30 minutes at a time.
Download PowerDVD
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RealPlayer
RealPlayer is both a media player and a plugin.
As a plugin, it's really only used for a few major files - RealMedia files, RealVideo files and the old standard, RealAudio files. File endings include .rm, .ra, .ram.
I As a Media Player, RealPlayer is simply too much. It tries to install extra software, and promote many of RealNetwork's other programs. Unless you have a large RealAudio library, you don't need RealPlayer and are free to use many alternatives.
Download RealPlayer
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Winamp
Winamp is made by a cool company called Nullsoft that created a vibrant community around this product.
Winamp is a skinnable media player with a graphic equalizer and a playlist. Nullsoft added a mini brower in the new versions, but these components, similar to a stereo system, are the base of this program.The team at nullsoft worked hard to get Winamp to play as many file formats as possible as smoothly as possible. Winamp is also essential for Shoutcast Internet Radio stations and Nullsoft is now moving onto video.
Needless to say, there are a number of plugins made for Winamp, so you will never be bored downloading them and trying them out.
Download Winamp
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Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player plays all video formats incuding its own WMV (Windows Media Video) and WMA (Windows Media Audio) files, as well as MPEG files, MP3 files, MIDI files, and whatever else people are using these days.
The media player application is has a library, visualizations, and the ability to create files from your CDs, though it prefers its own format. It's a good player, and not too bloated for a program that has all these nice basic features.
Download Windows Media Player
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QuickTime
QuickTime is both a media player and a plugin.
As a plugin, it's really only used for one major file - QuickTime Movie files, ending in .mov. Usually this means homemade movies by Macintosh users or most movie trailers.
I make sure that Windows Media Player is my default for most other audio and video files instead, and I certainly need to make sure QuickTime doesn't try to play Flash files online. It can't handle them.
As a Media Player, it's pretty nice and has that Apple feel. It seems like a simple player, without extra tools like a Library viewer or a "what's new" panel. This is commercial software for Windows users, but still works for free. Free users simply have to put up with a "Do you want to purchase?" screen when you open the program. This screen does not come up when using QuickTime as a plugin.
Download QuickTime
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