Windows 7: best player for watching movie.

Once upon a time VLC was less than optimal for certain movies encoded with certain subtitles types and codecs...



I recently downloaded the 1.10 version from the website and to my surprise they've really polished it for those said file types... its as good as, if not better than MPC-HC in terms of CPU utilization even with 1080p mkvs that it used to chug when playing....

i used to swear by vlc, then kmp, but now i'm different, and i use the funky chinese splayer.

i like:

• the simple, clean, very usable unskinned interface
  
• it's zippy, lightweight, but still very powerful
  
• it's played every file i've thrown at it without needing codecs (it can use external codecs if u want)
  
• excellent subtitle handling (i watch a lot of foreign movies) - it'll even go find and download subs for you
  
• it lets me use my extra mouse buttons as forward and rewind controls
  
• never seen it crash (yet )

be weary of testing splayer.

Uninstalling splayer will leave you with a broken system...
where Media Center cannot even recognize a simple AVI file as playable.
This information applies to a wide range of filetypes, not just AVI's.

really? i didn't know that!

i've never used media center anyway - not really sure what it is to be honest, if i want to watch a movie, i double click the file in explorer, et voila...

Um, unless it's changed a lot in 6 months, you can't watch a movie with foobar2000. And the thread title is "best player for watching a movie".

Doh !! Wrong thread

fubar

This is why I'm using VLC. Would be better if WMP supports mkv.

Never crashed on my laptop.

Solarmystic, there's a more recent version of VLC now: 1.1.11
VideoLAN - VLC: Free streaming and multimedia solutions for all OS!

I have a question about WMP:

I have 2 DVD Drives, one internal in my Desktop Tower and one external drive.

I am wondering if it's possible to watch both drives at the same time on the same PC with WMP. In other words, will WMP allow the user to watch 2 dvd's on separate DVD Drives on the same PC. ie, have 2 WMP windows active at the same time, viewing 2 dvd's?

I tried it on my PC and it doesn't seem to allow 2 windows to remain active/open with 2 dvd's playing on 2 separate DVD drives on the same PC.

What happens with me, is that I'll be viewing a DVD from Drive #1, and then I'll load a DVD into Drive #2. When Drive #2 detects the DVD, it grabs WMP from Drive #1, and begins playing the DVD in Drive #2, or vice versa.

[edit] I worked around the ability to watch 2 DVD's simultaneously on my PC by downloading another player utility "FLV". But it would be nice to be able to use WMP with multiple windows if that's possible with WMP.