Free alternative to Windows Media Player?

[wasted years]

Is there something out there I can use that'll be compatible with Opera?

[wn3]

I can heartily recommend VLC Media Player. I've never yet given it a media file that it won't play.

[Fidgits]

winamp?

[hornet]

Media Player Classic does the trick for me.

www.filehippo.com/download_media_player_classic/

Add Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative and it'll play just about anything, as far as I can tell. Think the K-Lite full codec packs have everything included :-

www.filehippo.com/download_klite_codec_pack/

[FourWheelDrift]

wn3 said:

I can heartily recommend VLC Media Player. I've never yet given it a media file that it won't play.

I've been using that for the past 2 weeks after getting fed up with WMP not playing AVI's all of a sudden (plays them in a strange off coloured manner) which I couldn't fix.

But I find VLC just as annoying, it doesn't play audio of the first few seconds of a clip, plays the images sometimes with the sound coming in later or sometime decides to miss off the first few seconds of video as well.

[CommanderJameson]

Another vote for VLC - but I'm on OS X, so your mileage may vary if you're on Windows.

[jimmyjimjim]

FourWheelDrift said:

But I find VLC just as annoying, it doesn't play audio of the first few seconds of a clip, plays the images sometimes with the sound coming in later or sometime decides to miss off the first few seconds of video as well.

Really? I've put HUNDREDS of hours of video through it (actually, having said that I did a rough calc. - about 500 hours in about 2 years. Ouch.) and had very little problem.
The only time I've had issues is where the original encoding is suspect (sync issues, proven via media player on other pcs), and even then, you can go in to the settings and manually sync the video and sound to compensate.
I can only think of 3 occasions that's happened. What was your source material? PC spec anything to do with it? (intrigued, because it's so good for me...)

[che6mw]

jimmyjimjim said:

(intrigued, because it's so good for me...)

Second vote for VLC. Never ever had an issue with it and it'll play anything thrown at it.

[shocker-z]

me too VLC is great codecs built into the application too so it causes less problems