14 DAY TRIAL // Originally developed as a media player for Linux, MPlayer's compatibility extended to Windows, in an attempt to provide users with a simple-to-use media player capable of opening most audio and video formats.
Unlike many popular media playing tools, MPlayer's graphical interface has a lighter skill set that exempts users from customizing comprehensive settings. Instead, it opts for a minimalistic appearance that gathers the necessary and suffice elements for enjoying movies and listening to music. However, its features can be enhanced via command lines.
Apart from the core files, the full package includes the MPUI (Mplayer's user interface) and SMPlayer frontend, binary codecs, program files optimization, and automatic updates checkup every 30 days. Users may exclude any of these components to continue with the somewhat lengthy setup.
They can also select their CPU type to maximize performance and prevent system incompatibilities, as well as make some tweaks: enable the skinned user interface (SMPlayer only), OpenGL-based video renderer instead of Direct3D, and volume normalization by default.
Rather than integrating an over-the-top interface, MPlayer prefers to deliver a straightforward approach that allows users to play media on the go. With a look that resembles Media Player Classic, the GUI integrates mostly basic options and reserves some advanced ones for experienced users.
If the movie contains multiple audio and subtitle streams, it is possible to toggle them. MPlayer has an automatic detection mode available for the aspect ratio, but it can also force the image's width and height to 4:3, 16:9 or 2.35:1, depending on the user's preference. Meanwhile, deinterlacing can be simple, adaptive or turned off.
The Good
The app supports numerous media formats, multiple threads, command lines and hotkeys (listed in the “Help” menu). It can rebuild the index of broken or incomplete files. CPU and RAM consumption is very low.
MPlayer managed to play most of our audio and video samples during our tests without any issues.
There is a portable edition made available by a third-party developer for those who want to directly run MPlayer from a pen drive without changing Windows settings, but it has an older version than its installer counterpart.
