Top 10 Best Windows Media Player Alternatives

Windows Media Player is included in your Windows pack. However, when compared with other free media players out there, it lacks the ability to handle many frequently used video and audio formats. In addition, with the development of Windows Media Center (WMC) ceased in 2009, you won't see any Windows Media Player update in Windows 8 or Windows 10. What's even worse is since the release of Windows 8, you can't no longer play DVDs unless you pay extra for an upgrade.

Obviously, there are a variety of free media players out there that can replace Windows Media Player to do a good job when playing videos on Windows. They can handle a huge variety of audio and video formats without the need to download additional codecs for the more esoteric file types. What's more, they also organize your media library for you, tagging songs and movies automatically, adding album art, and letting you edit metadata manually if necessary. The following article will show you 10 best great alternatives to Windows Media Player.

Top 10 Alternatives to Windows Media Player

1. VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is hugely popular, and for good reason - it's completely free, support almost all file formats without the need to download additional codecs, can optimize video and audio playback for your chosen device, supports streaming, and can be extended almost infinitely with downloadable plugins. These not only add extra features to the player - they also enable integration with other programs and streaming services.

2. KMPlayer

Another multimedia player that supports a large range of formats, KMPlayer is also incredibly light on resources. This makes it the perfect player for PC users with little space to spare. KMPlayer boasts a minimalist interface with subtle aesthetic touches. One of these involves the player's color changing with every new track played. KMPlayer is highly customizable as well, with the ability to choose skins, add plug-ins and change playback options. You can even change picture properties, sharpen video images, apply filters and take video captures through the processing tools KMPlayer provides.

3. GOM Player

If you are going to find a powerful media player with supporting for a health number of video/audio formats, you can't miss GOM player. Awesome looking user interface and a huge variety of video/audio codecs including TRUEMOTION2, Cinepak and Nellymoser, GOM player is capable of handling a wide array of video and audio files effortlessly. The formats including MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC audio and FLV, MP4, VOB, MKV, DIVX video. Apart from these standard features, GOM player still has other nice goodies: screen capture, 3D audio effects, video flip/rotate, multi-language subtitles, equalizer presets, etc as well. The custom mouse and keyboard shortcuts for controlling the player actions can also be specified.

4. MediaMonkey

MediaMonkey is designed with various functions. It can manage 100,000+ music and video files without bogging down, record CDs and download music, movies, and podcasts, lookup and intuitively tag album art, lyrics and other metadata and more. It is a so powerful media playing software which comes with a comprehensive system of managing the library with the integrated library management tools. But it may be a little bit difficult to play video files on your computer. It is the best Windows Media Player alternative to help you play music files.

5. SMPlayer

Unlike other media players for Windows 10, SM has many rich features to let you finely adjust the way media files are played. You can view videos with different aspect ratio. In addition, SM player also make it easy to change between different audio channels for multi-channel media files. You can directly search for the playing video's subtitles on the Open Subtitles databases straight from the player. Audio and video filters are also available to you. An important feature of SM Player is that it allows you to granularly configure the playback properties like playback speed, and you can even add time delays for audio and subtitles. SM Player support huge number of file formats some audio formats are MP3, WMA, ALAC, OGG, AC3, some videos formats are DIVX, H.264, RealVideo, WMV, VOB(video).

6. UMPlayer

UMPlayer is based on another solid multimedia player, MPlayer. It's a player with a minimalist interface that's arguably more stylish than the player it was based on, which makes for a great user experience when listening to audio or watching videos. UMPlayer can play online TV and radio stations and offers a built-in search feature that lets you find videos in YouTube and stream music via Shoutcast. It's unlikely you'll have difficulties playing any media file, as this player includes more than 200 codecs. UMPlayer can also take screenshots of video files and supports subtitle downloads for foreign language movies.

7. PotPlayer

PotPlayer is a free advanced alternative to Windows Media Player. It is an excellent media player that can handle a large variety of media file types. In test, this free PotPlayer can easily play 1.6 GB MOV, 865 MB MKV, or a 1.4 GB AVI file without any issue. It carries a subtitle feature to play .ass and .srt subtitles natively when they are located in the same folder as the video file. There are also many other functions in PotPlayer, you can download it and have a free trial.

8. Zoom Player

Zoom Player is the most sophisticated, flexible and powerful Media Player for Windows PCs & Tablets. Using zoom player's smart play technology, media formats play instantly with reliability and smooth motion. Zoom Player supports all popular formats : H.264, HEVC, DVD, Blu-Ray, XVID, DIVX, WMV, FLV, MOV, MPEG 1/2/4, WebM, MP3, AAC, FLAC, DTS, Dolby Digital, Dolby-TrueHD, OPUS and many more ..You can also customize the user interface to the extreme with hundreds of settings and options that control every aspect of the user experience.

9. Media Player Classic Home Cinema

Media Player Classic Home Cinema is so called because it is based on the look of the original Media Player software that was bundled with Windows, but it's evolved far beyond its humble beginnings. As the name implies, the focus here is on video, but it also handles music very well. With a massive range of built-in codecs, you'll be hard pressed to find a file it can't play.

10. SPlayer

If lightweight and simple are your preferences, give SPlayer a look. Although its interface might seem a little dull to some, it's perfect for minimalists. SPlayer is also easy to use. It supports an enormous list of file formats so you can watch virtually any movie you own and listen to song files from any online store. Since the interface is so basic, it doesn't interfere with the media you're trying to enjoy. In addition, SPlayer comes with a few extra perks, such as an audio and video equalizer, a screenshot feature and three interface options.

Best Windows Media Player alternative assistant

Sometimes, you may be disappointed to find you may still have problems to get certain media types such as commercial Blu-ray/DVD disc or digital video such as H.265, XAVC/XAVC S, Prores, ,MXF, etc played Windows Media Plyaer or above listed other free media player apps. In that condition, you can download a third-party media conversion app such as Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate which can assist to rip all copy protected Blu-ray/DVD movies or unsupported digital file formats to media player readable digital file formats with perfect quality and fast conversion speed.

To get better quality, you can also flexibly adjust output profile parameters such as video codec, bit rate, frame rate, resolution and audio codec, bit rate, sample rate and channels, etc in the "Profile Settings" window.

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