MJ Player

While your computer is connected to the Internet, nearly all of your favorite clips and videos are at a few mouse clicks away. If online playback doesn’t require much besides a common web browser for a proper multimedia experience, an offline experience fully depends on a dedicated player. Amongst others that managed to make a name for themselves, MJ Player comes with simplicity in mind so all your attention goes to the content of the file you’re playing.

The application comes in a pretty light package. As a direct consequence, you don’t have to go through the whole bustle of hitting a few “Next” buttons to get it functional. This also enables you to keep it on a USB Flash drive and use on the go, while having no impact on the target system’s health status.

Running the executable might bring a little disappointment, with all features wrapped in a poorly designed interface that feels really rough. Playback controls are intuitive through icons, as well as all other elements, because of simple descriptions and corresponding trigger methods.

More frustration is accumulated when trying to import files. First of all, drag and drop is not supported, so you’re forced to use the open dialog. Second, you have to take your chances with different formats, because there’s no way to tell which are supported, only that you can load both videos and songs.

You notice a few controls through which you enable jingles, DJ, and loop. However, some time needs to be spent configuring them by creating a special folder for jingle effects and handling a TXT file which is supposed to shout out custom lines.

There’s no built-in playlist to cut the dependency of the open dialog every now and then. Even if multiple supported files are in the same directory, hitting the “Next” button only plays the same song again. For whatever reason, videos either stubbornly refuse to load or make the application stop working.

Bottom line is that if you want to listen to your favorite songs, there are countless players and methods to do so. Sadly, MJ Player is not amongst the suitable choices, falling behind both in terms of visuals and functionality compared to how much technology has advanced throughout the years. If you’re looking for alternatives, this is definitely not the one to start with.