Simply Better

VLC Media Player

"The cross-platform open-source multimedia framework, player and server"

VLC media player is an open source alternative to Windows Media Player. The great thing about this media player is that it plays just about everything, including dvd, cd, mp3, FLAC, avi, mp4, ogg, wave, midi, wmv and a host of others. I first started using VLC after I had a problem playing a file in Windows media player. I couldn't get it to work even though I had played other video files of the same type. Finally I downloaded a codec pack and got the player to start working only to have the same problem with another media type. I admit that it was frustrating trying to figure out the problem, but not near as frustrating as dealing with the issue of media player crashing. I needed something stable and reliable.

That is when I found VLC media player.  This is no ordinary 'free' media player, but a powerful free tool licensed under the GNU general public license-. The following text is from the 'preamble' of the GNU General Public License:"The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users." The benefit of such a license on free software is the ability for developers to make changes and improvements that make something good even better. There are several versions of this player on every operating system platform, which allows a greater chance of finding exactly what you need.

I use the basic media player available here. Simply download and run the installer. That is all there is to having a fully functional, virtually crash proof, free media player that can play almost all audio and video files "straight out of the box". One other cool feature is the ability of VLC to play streams directly from youtube. Just copy the url of the video you want to see and hit ctrl-v, and VLC will play the file.

This piece of free software is simple to use considering the fact that it is not just your average media player, but an open source project for nearly any media file you will ever come across. It's really time to start ditching the bloated, resource hungry, crash-prone software that comes pre-installed on the computers we buy. Let's learn to stop relying on what 'they' force feed us and begin using free, open source software that is more functional and better quality.