Too many video players
Executive summary:
Make VLC media player your default player for all video files on your PC, ignore/uninstall everything else, and stick to web-based players and content directories for everything else.
The fastest-growing group of applications on my PC seems to be video/media players. Currently installed:
- QuickTime Player
- VLC Media Player
- Adobe Media Player
- RealPlayer
- Miro
- Veoh TV
- Joost
- Zoom Player
- Windows Media Player
- Amazon Unbox Video
That’s just video players. I also have music players (e.g. iTunes), video editing tools, DVD decryption and burning tools, and a player for a DTV receiver.
Needless to say, this is nuts, and there’s no way I’d ever carry over all these to a new PC.
I am most frustrated with the offerings from Apple (QuickTime), Adobe, Real and Microsoft, because all of these companies easily have the resources to make their players universal like VLC, and yet they choose to support only a subset of formats (and emphasize their proprietary formats, of course).
I’ve also tried a bunch of things like Joost, Veoh TV and Miro that try to bring a TV-like combined directory and viewing experience into one player. Of these, Miro is the one that impressed me most (free, open source, HD quality is great), but none of them are sufficiently impressive to make them worth the download. Veoh is particularly awful in that it features un-fast-forwardable commercials (come on people, we are living in the post-TiVo era here).
Amazon Unbox almost makes the cut for movies, except the selection is so limited that I find myself forced to go back to other sources (DVD, etc.) for most of the movies I want to see. Which I end up playing with VLC, of course.
Let me know if I’m missing something here guys.
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