MEDIA Revolution

If you are not a fan of the operating system's default media player, you can find dozens of replacements on the Internet, which provide support for numerous media formats, as well as many other useful features. A good example is MEDIA Revolution. It is capable of playing just about any video or audio file you can think of. The player has a modern and elegant user interface, as well as a good number of useful features to go with it.

MEDIA Revolution is not free, but a fully functional trial version is available. It works on Windows XP and all later editions and it can be installed in a few moments. Besides installing the media player, the setup wizard can also create file associations.

When launched, MEDIA Revolution will display a small control window, from which you can launch different players, for local media files, DVDs and TV, if you have a tuner. The players have similar interfaces. Besides the usual playback and volume controls, you can also find a few options for zooming in on video footage, playing the media files on the control window, rating them and more. You may also right click anywhere on a media player to reveal the necessary options for loading subtitles, changing the aspect ratio, recording and performing other actions.

The control window can be hidden and revealed again at any time. It displays the title, artist, album, bitrate and sample rate for currently playing media files. You can also find the same options you would usually find on other media players, like playback or recording controls. Additionally, the control window can reveal a series of power options, for shutting down the computer or setting it to sleep or hibernate mode, according to a schedule or when a media player is done playing a song or a video.

As previously mentioned, MEDIA Revolution supports a wide range of media formats. If you need additional codecs, you can access the general settings menu and click a button to retrieve them from the Internet. You can also restrict the use of certain codecs, configure a TV tuner and more, on the same general settings panel.