Review: The Best Free Media Players of 2008

October 6, 2008, Author: Cezar Renta

Media Players are essential for any computer, either you play movies or listen to music, you need a good media player to fulfill your multimedia needs. Here are the best free multimedia players of 2009, voted and favored here on FileCluster.

VLC Media Player

This is probably the most voted player of all, capable of playing files formats such as: .avi, .mpeg, .divx, .ogg, .asf etc, as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. The streams are made via UDP/HTTP or multicasted on an IPv4 or IPv6 network. Another good thing about VLC is that you don’t need to install any additional codecs, making VLC a “ready to go” player.

Download VLC Media Player

GOM Player

Another very good free media player, GOM Player, comes from the guys at Gretech Corp. GOM will play most media files and as VLC Media Player, comes with built-in codecs. GOM Player can be customized using various skins, going “easy” on your computer’s resources. With throngs of users worldwide, GOM Player makes it one of the most favored free media players worldwide.

Download GOM Player

Winamp

If you don’t know about Winamp, you probably live in a cave or didn’t ever had a computer. Winamp is one of the oldest music players, with millions of downloads every month. Winamp also became a full media player, playing most known media extensions. However, WinAmp depends on your installed codecs for video playback, but it does a good job in our opinion. While we recommend a “dedicated” video player such as VLC or GOM, Winamp can fulfill your daily music and video needs. Believe it or not, Winamp is still my favorite music player.

Download Winamp

Foobar2000

While Foobar2000 is only a music player, we consider it one of the best music players out there. Having a large enthusiast community behind it, eating almost no system resources and constantly updated by its daddy, Peter Pawlowski, Foobar2000 makes it to the top. Foobar2000 is customizable in every aspect, from appearance, skins, tabs and modules to behaviors and keyboard shortcuts. If you don’t believe us, just try it.

Download Foobar2000

BS.Player

Although the free version of BS.Player comes adware patched, it still one of the best media players out there. Again, BS.Player is one of the few media players that goes soft on your computer’s resources, making any multimedia experience enjoyable. Capable of playing any type of multimedia file and reading any CD/DVD, combined with numerous playback features, BS.Player remained one of the top media players out there.

Download BS.Player

Media Player Classic

If you are (were) a fan of the old Windows 98/ME Media Player, you need to know there is a freeware media player that looks the same, Media Player Classic. Of course, this media player software is open-source and not handmade by Microsoft, as you probably figured. Media Player Classic is a very good free media player alternative, having your basic features embedded with a very simple, yet effective interface. MPC doesn’t eat-up your resources either (yes, we don’t like resource gourmands) and provides a very smooth and enjoyable playback. Note that you will need to have codecs installed for MPC. While this is not a perfect media player (who is right?), we recommend you give it a try.

Download Media Player Classic