I am aware of the fact that this software has been subject to Softpedia's Compared Reviews a couple of weeks ago. But given its popularity among www.softpedia.com users, I felt obliged to review this player alone. I am absolutely sure that everybody knows a little something about MV2 player and all of you know that it is free. The software's first release was in 2003; it was developed by MV2 and sent to the market with no strings attached.

The interface is developed to be used by both beginners and more advanced users. It is as simple to use as the user desires. What I mean is that if a beginner confines to the basics of a video player, everything is O.K. The more you want to find out about what MV2 can do, the more complicated the software may seem to you.

MV2 has an installation file of just a little above 1 MB. The installation will only ask you for three things: selection of language, shortcuts and the installation folder. The language selection is only for the installation. If you want to set a language for the menu of the player, you have to right-click the application window and select it from there.

The application window looks exactly like a video player and even displays some information about the opened file (file format, resolution, fps, bitrate). Almost all of us use it exclusively as a video player but you should know that it also works as an audio player and image viewer (most video players have these options included, but there are many limitations concerning the file formats).

The "Options" menu has three levels the user can choose from, depending on his/her skills. The "Basic" level is the simplest of all (although it has lots of options the user can change). It contains the player settings (pausing, tray controls, etc.), adjust the video window (aspect ratio, border color, etc., fullscreen, skins (lots of skins on the producer's website), subtitles (properties: alignment, color, border), set file associations (movie, video, audio, playlist, pictures, audio CDs and subtitles).

The "Controls" option is the richest in the menu. It contains all the shortcuts for all the actions of the player (OSD, volume, video size, play – seek, speed, color controls, TTS, skin, movie menu, etc.).

In "Normal" mode the option list is getting larger. You have in addition some more options in video window, a configurable OSD menu, DS graph menu and TV/Lin in menu.

The "Expert" mode brings even more options in almost all the menus. A newly introduced category is the "Filter Manager" that has a collection of no less than 134 filters to choose from. There is no point to analyze each option in the "Expert" mode as we could keep it like that for ages.

With these three user modes the player will surely adjust to your highest standards. The supported files are enough for a rational user – 19 video formats (I personally would have enjoyed it even more if it supported the .m4v format).

The user can create a catalog with the audio and video files. The playlist feature is very easy to handle and extremely useful in playing many short movies (cartoons, video clips and all kinds of short movies). Adding files to the playlist eliminates the task of opening each movie, so you can sit comfortably in your couch and watch your videos.


The Good

The software is designed to be used by the most pretentious users and has options for every one of them. The fact that you can watch DVD video format keeps it up to date.
Resizeable window, aspect ratio adjustment, subtitle configuring, file format selecting, skinning, OSD options, customizable keyboard shortcuts and many more represent just a few of the options collection MV2 has to offer.


The Bad

There are out there some video formats like .m4v that are not supported by this player (but that's just to be mean).
I had some problems with the capturing option. I couldn't get a snapshot of the movie window. The software has no codecs included, so you have to install them yourself.
I loved the audio file associations but there should still be some updating too.
For the "Expert" mode, some users might feel the need for a Help menu, thus they could become acquainted with the options and learn what they actually do.

The Truth

I have been using this player for some time now (almost a year) and I am not going to change it pretty soon. It is just great for watching movies. If you have unsynchronized subtitles, you can adjust it from the subtitle properties option. I don't recommend trying it, just use it. It's free, what the hack!

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: