Marx Media Player

Although most modern multimedia content can be easily streamed online nowadays, with only a web browser required for playback, offline files require specialized applications for rendering. Marx Media Player is one of them and comes with a lightweight set of tools to help you enjoy video files of different kinds, in a comfortable environment.

One of the main advantages is that the application skips you the effort of going through a setup process, and can run right after download. This enables it to be carried around on a thumb drive, along with some clips to view on other computers besides your own, without having any impact whatsoever on system registry entries.

The visual design is minimalistic, with a classic window frame housing all features, as well as a simple, intuitive set of playback controls. Progress slider lets you skip through content, while volume is adjusted from a different one. Resizing the window makes the preview area larger, and you can also enter the fullscreen mode for a proper experience.

Unfortunately, file support leaves a lot to be desired, and only a few formats can be played, such as AVI, MPG, and WMV. Loading one needs to be done through the built-in browse dialog because drag and drop are not supported here.

Whenever the video ends, you need to spend the time to load a different one, because of the lack of a playlist editor. Controls need to be handled through dedicated buttons. Sadly, hotkeys are not among the built-in features, but chances are you can start and stop playback using a multimedia keyboard.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that Marx Media Player is a straightforward video player, coming equipped with the bare necessities for video playback. File support is rather disappointing, with no playlist editor for a continuous view of shows, while the lack of hotkeys can create a bit of frustration, especially when you need to instantly pause.