MPlayer for Windows (SMPlayer)

If you use linux you’ll probably already use mplayer but for when I’m playing video on a windows machine my favourite media player by far (particularly for playing soft-subbed files, such as a lot of fansubs of anime are released with) is mplayer for windows with the SMPlayer gui. It seems this isn’t particularly well known about, and it runs just as well on windows as it does on linux. It’s available on the official mplayer website download page.

It is solely self contained (like VLC) but has full support for ASS styled subs, and I’ve I’ve had far better results with playback on slower machines (when configured properly). The GUI also makes it friendly for those who don’t want to rely on the command line, and makes it easy to configure by simply looking through the options available.

My main piece of advice I’d suggest is to (if using the GUI) change the process priority of mplayer to normal rather than high (this is just an option under the config for mplayer), otherwise when playing demanding video the GUI will lag and make the player almost unusable without using keyboard shortcuts.

As all its codecs are self contained it won’t interfere with any other media players you use, so better than me telling you about how wonderful it is, I suggest you download it and give it a try, as this player is greatly underused (mainly I believe though a lack of knowledge of its existence).