VPlayer

After a hard day's work, you most likely end up home in the hope of enjoying a good movie or simply listening to your favorite tunes. Your PC is probably the tool used in this regard because it's suited with all kinds of multimedia playback applications. One example is VPayer, which promises to offer an alternative to conventional video and audio utilities.

The application is pretty lightweight, with no installation process required in order to take advantage of all it has to offer. Running it simply brings up the main window and you can start loading the media files you feel like viewing.

However, you must first get past the odd design, with a line of letters, each representing a specific function, the only intuitive buttons being those for “Exit” and “Help”. Luckily, hovering your mouse over them displays a small tooltip with helpful info.

You are able to load some of the most commonly used audio and video formats. A progress slider is available to skip through content, volume control lets you set the level of output decibels and included playback options provide a means to stop, pause and navigate.

Image files can also be imported, but the overall design makes it all difficult and already playing files stop. What's more, each time a new file needs to be loaded you must restart the application, because once an item starts to play some functions seem to refuse to function properly.

Many features are missing, one of the most important being a playlist so you can better view your selection. Needless to say that subtitles are not supported and nor is there a way to enhance sound, due to the unimplemented equalizer.

All things considered, VPlayer is far from competing in the race for the best media player, having a lot to more to learn from its competitors. Sure it can play video, audio and even display image files, but the overall design is rough around the edges, and short-fused users might not have the necessary patience to get acquainted with its features.