The VLC media player is undoubtedly the beast when it comes to playing videos in various formats. In the era of the rising popularity of Youtube, Dailymotion and other online video portal have raised the popularity of VLC media player.
It is free, multipurpose and open source media player having various formats playing capability. Developed by VideoLan, VLC media player has got gigantic download counts of 1.1 billion; add 134 million to it if you want to count OS X and other platform downloads too. Despite being free VLC manages to provide features like ad-free interface, video as wallpaper on windows 10, media streaming, and support for different formats. Which concludes for us having no doubt why VLC has achieved this position.
Best 7 VLC Media Player Alternatives For 2017-2018
RealPlayer:
RealPlayer launched back in 1995 was one of the few good media player available back in times. As the time passed RealPlayer continued to develop with innovation and managed to keep up with the new and feature loaded media players.
The program evolved to deliver multiple formats support Real Video and Real Audio own formats – RA, RM, RV, and RMVB plus it also supports formats like MP4, MPEG, Window Media Player and FLV.
Apart from hardcore media playing, RealPlayer offers you to bookmark videos online, burn discs, stream videos online and much more.
GOM Media Player:
Developed under GOM Labs, GOM Player is one of the most dominant contenders for VLC media player alternative. It powers with advanced codecs technology for both video and audio playbacks. Which means you don’t need to install codecs separately.
As far as subtitles are concerned, it supports various subtitle files like SRT, SMI, SUB, RT. GOM media player can play various kind of video formats effortlessly, it also ensures that you get the maximum possible video quality. It seems like GOM Labs team has putten a lot of efforts in the appearance department which resulted in offering different cool skins for the player.
GOM Player comes with different language support too, so that you can find your way around using your own preferred language. There are lot more advanced features you will discover once you install this application and we believe it’s worth a try.
KM Player:
Being one of the most popular alternatives to the VLC media player, KM Player puts a lot of effort when it comes about user experience. The player is more commonly known as K Multimedia Player among a mass of its users. Using this multimedia player you can run various video formats such as AVI, OGM, MVK 3GP, OGG, VCD, FLV and quick time.
KM Player proudly boasts its unique features, one of them is 3D mode playback. And the best part is, it doesn’t consume much of the system resources. Furthermore, you can even non-3D videos in 3D ones, all you need is a 3D glass with you.
KM Player is specially optimized to perform best on Microsoft Windows. There are 360 million active users using KM Player for their multimedia solutions on PC and Mobiles. Even after offering numerous features with powerful playback capability, its developers managed to make it light on PC as well as mobile version.
Winamp
Winamp is another awesome video player established back in the mid-90s. Initially developed by Nullsoft owned by Dmitry Boldyrev and Justin Frankel which was sold to AOL, which later sold to Nullsoft in 2014. The video player turns out to be highly customizable, be it changing the visualizations or choosing skins among hundreds from the depository.
It supports a number of formats like MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPEG (ES, PS, MP3, PS, MP4, TS), MPG, MV2, M2V, NSV, OGG, M3U, and M4A. Wide plugin library feature is what makes Winamp stand out of the crowd, it works pretty well just like those extensions do to browsers like Chrome and Firefox. Apart from installing codecs packs to play different files, Winamp is also capable of burning DVDs which makes it a fully featured media player.
5Kplayer
5KPlayer being the most promising media player for Mac and Windows has got an edge of VLC Media Player when high-resolution video playback is concerned. It overshadows VLC media player in playing 4K UHD and HD playback up to 8K. In an addition, 5KPlayer features online video downloading support and AirPlay Streaming with mirroring too.
5KPlayer works pretty well in the playback department, it supports all of the major video and audio types and forms. You can stream and download online videos from more than total 3000+ supported websites on 5KPlayer. This media player acts like a video to audio converter as well, you can convert and download online videos in audio formats directly. Furthermore, you can also convert local videos into MP3/AAC.
DivX player is not just a media player to play your multimedia files, it offers much more than that. Developed by DivX LLC, the media player is a perfect option when you feel that VLC is not too good to play high-quality videos.
For the highlight – It has got the capability to stream video to DLNA compatible device. The code which comes from DivX is pretty well known for its ability to compress lengthy videos into smaller sizes while somewhat maintaining its quality. HEVC Playback for DivX gives 4K Ultra HD dedicated support to ensure high-performance video playback. Furthermore, popular video formats like MKV, AVI, and MP4 handling is super optimised in DivX Player.
It seems like DivX team did a hard work in the video playback section, we are sure you will love it! The FF/RW feature makes it easier to jump through the chapters, which lets you watch your favorite scenes in a more convenient manner. Organizing media content becomes much easier with DivX media library, also it packs with Resume-Play feature with advanced audio.
If we sum up everything, we may conclude that DivX is the perfect alternative to the VLC media player, especially if you consider quality more.
Media Player Classic – Home Cinema
MPC-HC or better known as Media Player Classic – Home Cinema appears to justify its powerful name. Initially, it was developed by Gabest as a closed-source application but later relicensed to free software under GNU General Public License. It is a compact media player which is available for Windows in 32 bit and 64 bit operating systems.
Despite having a minimalistic design, MPC-HD offers wide support and packs with every feature you might find in the latest media players. The feature list includes support for Matroska, DVD, VCD with an in-built codec that further lets you play DTS, AC2, 3GP, MP2 audio. MPC-HD which is a lightweight media player becomes really efficient while playing video files which you earlier thought was “heavy”.
The extra extensions and plugins on MPC- HC serves as an ice on the cake, which is again loved by its users. MPC-HC power-ups, even more, when you start using these tools, regardless of your PC configuration. Oh yes, we forgot to mention that this media player is too mild on your system resources and has minimal memory consumption.
Media Player Classic – Home Cinema somewhat is identical to Windows Media Player 6.4 but delivers much more than that. So, if you consider performance with powerful features over appearance then MPC – HC is just for you.
Conclusion
VLC Media Player is truly a beast when it comes to playing videos in various formats, this is why it has earned millions of loyal and active users. However, there are many other deserving media players which you might want to try – out of which we filtered seven just for you!
This list is a result of weeks of research and we are sure that you won’t feel the lack of VLC media player once you start using any one of them. Each of above media players is the pioneer in their own areas, now the final call of choice is yours.
What are your thoughts about VLC media player, which alternative you are going to try or will you stick to VLC?
